Harry Potter and the Sun Queen
by Steelbadger
Summary: During his exploration of the history of the magical Far East, Harry Potter finds cryptic references to an island Kingdom called Yamatai, supposedly ruled by the powerful Sun Queen Himiko until its sudden disappearance millennia ago. He never was able to pass up a good mystery.
1. A Stormy Beginning

**A/N: **As you're probably aware, this is a Harry Potter/Tomb Raider crossover. It will follow the approximate events of the Tomb Raider 2013 reboot game but will probably depart significantly from the game's story. This is not a fix-it fic and Harry is not all powerful. He's a normal(ish) wizard without the powers of Dumbledore/Merlin/God, his strengths are much the same as canon. He is determined, good under pressure and able to puzzle out problems to find a solution. Much like Lara really. One thing missing from the canon Harry is needless angst. I can't stand needless angst.

I'm trying to keep Lara as close to her game personality as possible, though it's a little difficult with the utterly contrasting tones of the cut-scenes and game-play. I'll be pushing her more towards cut-scene Lara, as she seems more relate-able.

At the moment there is the possibility of a relationship between Harry and Lara, but given their situation I wouldn't hold out for any fluff.

Also, I own nothing. Not even my kidneys. Blame it on a wild night out in Glasgow.

* * *

This was amazing. No. Better than amazing. Utterly brilliant. He was completely stuck. Harry Potter, he of the many hyphenated titles, was completely stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific. That shouldn't even be possible.

But he was, and what an island!

Over the last few years Harry had taken up the hobby of a wandering adventurer to fill his copious free time. He had been curse breaking in Egypt, Nundu stalking in the Saharan Magical Reserve, Dragon wrangling in Bulgaria and had even spent a brief time running for his life from swarms of Hairy MacBoons in the Outer Hebrides. Earlier that year, he had turned his attentions towards Japan, home of the mysterious and extinct Eastern Magical Kingdom. Very few stories were retained from that time -roughly contemporaneous with Merlin-, but a few ancient tomes told of a kingdom ruled by a powerful caste of mages. Most believed it to be a myth, much like Atlantis. Some even suggested that it was the inspiration for Atlantis. Of course most of those people published in the Quibbler so it wasn't exactly a mainstream opinion.

But then Harry had found references to the Kingdom of Yamatai in a muggle periodical. A mysterious kingdom, ruled by the Sun Queen Himiko that rose and fell at roughly the same time as the mythical Eastern Magical Kingdom. It wasn't much, but it suggested to Harry that there was something to be found.

He was not going to pass an opportunity like that up.

So he had loaded up his survival gear and hopped on a carpet, intent on exploring the Triangle for any signs of the elusive island kingdom.

He certainly did find some signs. In a relatively small area near the middle of the triangle he ran into a powerful and extremely localised storm, one that apparently didn't show up on muggle weather charts. The huge wall of wind and water positively screamed magic to his now experienced senses. Just as Harry had been congratulating himself on his daring and sense of adventure the magic of the carpet had packed in completely.

He'd decided on magical transportation after doing the reading and finding that almost all boats and planes that passed through or over the area suffered catastrophic failures, a trademark of a powerfully magical location. He suspected that their electronics were being fried by the powerful protective magics still in place over the island Kingdom. That said, he'd been confident that magical means should be fine, after all they all worked at Hogwarts.

He'd been wrong. Being wrong was something he'd had to become rather accustomed to over the years. Really anyone who was friends with Hermione had to be prepared to be proven wrong at any moment, it had long ago lost its burn. Nevertheless, it was a little troubling. The carpet had jerked a bit, stuttered then completely failed. He'd had barely a moment to react and all he'd managed was to slow his descent into the roiling storm-tossed waters to something merely bruising rather than outright deadly.

As a result there was now good news and bad news. The good news was that he'd made it to his intended destination. The bad news was that he had none of his equipment. In fact, all he still had was his wand. The wand was good, he'd be in real trouble without that, but lacking his tent, food supplies, invisibility cloak, firebolt and medical potions was certainly a cause for concern. At least he'd been smart enough not to bring _the_ Invisibility Cloak on his travels. Or, rather, he'd been convinced that it was a bad idea. The loss of his trusty firebolt chafed more than enough as it was.

Another cause for concern was the wards that had sent him into the drink. They were truly impressive constructs. They covered the entire island and must extend out miles into the pacific ocean. They were the reason his carpet had failed so spectacularly and they had some other functions too.

No apparition. No portkeys. It even blocked disillusionment and other stealth spells. Whoever set up the wards had been impressively paranoid and even more impressively powerful. Harry had never even heard of a general ward against disillusionment. The closest he could think of was the thief's downfall in Gringotts but even that was really just a _Finite Incantatum_ effect carried by a fluid potion medium. An actual ward to do that was amazing. Harry wanted to find the ward nexus just to work out how it worked.

Also, finding the nexus would allow him to get off the island, but for now it just looked too interesting to even think of leaving. The entire island just reeked of magic, a new magic. A magic thought completely lost to history in the collapse of Japan's magical culture more than 1000 years ago. This was possibly Harry's greatest discovery. Not that he had all that many actual discoveries to his name. And he also had no actual idea yet exactly what he'd found, but it was certain to be earthshaking.

He was almost rubbing his hands together in glee. In fact, he would be if he wasn't so utterly exhausted. Falling through a magically enhanced storm into a 60ft sea was a pretty punishing workout and not one that Harry wanted to repeat.

So, before he could get to the exciting stuff he would have to cover the basics; food and shelter. As his supplies had all been lost he would been to find some seed food. Probably fish. Maybe some kind of long lasting tuber. All he needed was something vaguely edible and he'd be set for as long as he needed. Magic may not be able to create food from nothing, but it could replicate it endlessly. And water would certainly be easy enough.

He would also want some kind of base camp to explore the island from. His current position on a debris-strewn beach was far from ideal as he could already tell that the tides in this place were huge. He would need to find away into the interior of the island. That, however, was easier said than done. Ordinarily he would have simply flew or apparated to the top of the harsh, weather beaten cliffs that girded the island. Those options were not available to him this time, he'd have to find a gully or something to climb up if he wanted to get to the top and see what this mysterious island held in store.

Harry started walking along the narrow spit of sand the sea had cast him upon. He was careful to keep an eye out for any flotsam that might be salvageable. Most of it seemed to be ancient and ruined by years of salt water and rust. He was able to find a muggle first aid kit though, and quickly found another limitation he hadn't considered.

He had to _carry_ it. Honestly, how did muggles cope? He was used to carrying any number of things with him in his mokeskin pouch. Now, with the pouch lost to the turbulent seas surrounding Yamatai, he had no choice but to carry things the old fashioned way. He quickly decided he needed a backpack or something similar, he needed his hands free if he was to climb the intimidating cliffs. At least with a backpack he could shrink the supplies down a bit and carry more than normal.

As he progressed further along the beach he started to reconsider the wisdom of attempting to scale the cliffs. They looked absolutely brutal, and were completely sheer. No doubt magic could make the climb a bit safer, sticking charms and what not, but he really wasn't much of a climber.

He stared up at the cliff, trying to puzzle out how to make the climb easily with magic. As he looked he noticed a ledge high up on the cliff and what looked like a cave at the back. If he could reach that ledge he'd have a safe place to rest for the night. He looked around again, there was certainly plenty of material for transfiguration scattered about the beach, it seemed as if half the shipping in the pacific had washed up here at some time or other.

He had the beginnings of a plan. He could try a ladder, but it was still a very long way up, maybe 75ft or so, and transfiguring a ladder that long was no mean feat. Especially after spending 2 hours fighting to stay afloat in the stormy waters that had eventually cast him ashore.

A rope would be easier. But it would also be much harder to climb and Harry was rapidly approaching exhaustion. Really he could use a lift.

And that was actually doable. His plan made, Harry immediately got to work. First he conjured a long rope which snaked high up to the cliff ledge, wrapping itself about a heavy looking, weather worn rock. He quickly tied the lower end of the rope together to form a sling which he pulled over himself. Then he focussed on the upper end of the rope and worked on wrapping the heavy duty rope around a large log with a sticking charm for good measure. He then transfigured the log into lead. Slowly the heavy weight started sliding downwards, as it did it pulled Harry skywards. It was working.

It didn't take long for Harry to reach his target, as soon as he was up he vanished his conjured rope and took stock of his new surroundings.

He couldn't help giving off a low whistle. This island was an absolute graveyard. In just the cove he was now looking out over he could see the wrecks of more than 4 ships. And from all time periods, he had no idea how a tall ship had survived this long in the hostile seas, it must have been 400 years old! Clearly this island had some kind of preservation ward layered into its scheme, like Hogwarts. That just made Harry even more excited to see what awaited him in the hidden core of the island.

As he was surveying the wreck-strewn cove he became aware of a rumbling noise coming from the small cave at the back of his ledge. Looking around he crouched down to star into the dark cave, unable to make out anything in the inky blackness. It sounded as if there was some kind of cave in happening. He wanted absolutely nothing to do with that. After getting locked in a tomb in Egypt for a week he was quite happy to remain in the open air.

As he was considering the cave he suddenly realised he could hear more than just the susurration of distant rockfalls. Firstly, the sounds of collapse seemed to be coming nearer; secondly he was sure he could hear a voice.

He supposed he should really have expected the island to have some inhabitants. If Harry was unable to leave the island then it stood to reason that any muggles that got washed up here would be even more stuck. However, it did rather complicate his exploration plans. That was a problem for later, he couldn't exactly abandon some poor soul to their fate in a cave in.

It turned out that action would be unnecessary, however, as at that moment a young woman shot out of the cave on all fours, panting frantically in panic and fear. Almost the moment she escaped the cave in reached its conclusion, ejecting a cloud of dust from the cave and leaving the entrance completely blocked. The woman collapsed to the ground, sucking in deep painful sounding breaths before rolling onto her back in exhaustion.

The moment the woman noticed Harry she scrambled to her feet and hefted a piece of rock in her hand. She was hunched over with her free hand clutching her side, obviously injured. Her tattered tank top was soaked in a mixture of blood, mud and water. She was wearing cargo trousers that were similarly ruined, and a rough and ready bandage around her left leg. Somehow her dark brown hair was still up in its ponytail, despite all she had obviously been through and her pretty, aristocratic face, though muddied, was unmarked. Her deep brown eyes shone with a mixture of suspicion and determination.

She slowly backed away from Harry, holding the rock as if ready to use it should he try and close the distance. Harry raised his hands non-threateningly.

"Hey, it's OK, I'm not going to hurt you," said Harry as soothingly as he could manage, "you look like you could use a hand, that's a nasty wound you have in your gut. If you want I can have a look at it?"

She continued to regard Harry with suspicion, but as she moved it was obvious how much pain she was in. She wouldn't last long in this condition, of that much Harry was sure.

After a long pause she lowered the rock ever so slightly and responded. "I suppose so," she said in a cultured English accent. She lowered the rock further and grimaced as the adrenaline started to wear off and her injuries started to make themselves known. "Who are you?"

"Call me Harry. Proper introductions can wait, you need to have that wound seen to." He moved closer in, slowly so as not to spook the young woman. "You should probably sit down miss, you can't be doing it any good running around like you were."

As if her string were cut she collapsed to the ground and started making snuffling noises in between muttering to herself almost silently. Harry immediately moved over to her and started looking at the wound.

"Not quite what I thought it would be," she said bitterly, "my first real expedition and I end up shipwrecked, lost and tied up in a cave with a cannibalistic psychopath."

Harry blinked at that. "Cannibalistic psychopath? In the cave? You escaped?"

She seemed on the edge of tears now and was almost completely ignoring him. "There... There were so many bodies, I just... I didn't know what to do. Dad would have known, Roth would have known.". Suddenly she looked at Harry. "He's dead. The cave in."

Harry nodded in understanding. The girl had obviously been through a nightmarish experience. He decided that the best course of action would be for her to get some sleep. He could work his magic on her injuries while she slept and they could talk her through the harrowing adventure when she woke up and was a little more lucid. She was obviously freezing and starting to suffer from severe shock. Her whole body started to quiver like a leaf and her breathing started to come in short gasps.

He covertly palmed his wand and cast a sleeping charm on the girl, whose name he still didn't know, and watched as she drifted off quickly.

He immediately set about warming her up and tending properly to her injuries. First he built up a large fire from the brush that grew on and around their little ledge, lighting it quickly with a flick of his wand. Warmth was easy, the injuries were a bit more concerning. The most important one was the one he'd seen as soon as she appeared. It looked like something sharp had impaled her completely through the side of her waist. She was amazingly lucky that it didn't seem to have hit anything important. A bad belly wound could be an excruciating way to go, and there was really no muggle field medicine which could in any way help with the situation. But hers was not that bad, mostly just a flesh wound, if a rather bloody one.

He was able to quickly staunch the blood flow, clean the wound and heal up the area with simple healing charms. He then gave the rest of her a quick once-over. She had sprained her ankle, had a deep cut in her thigh, light burns on her lower legs and had a probable mild concussion as well as the beginnings of hypothermia. As Harry started tending to the laundry list of injuries he started to gain an appreciation for Madam Pomfrey's frustrations while he'd been at school.

It took longer than he'd like before Harry was happy that he'd fixed all the major issues with her health. His own tiredness making his actions sluggish while he attempted to tend to the injured girl. Looking over her clothes he wondered if if was worth fixing those as well. In the end he decided against it, they could wait until be was rested. Instead he conjured a large fluffy blanket big enough for both of them and transfigured some rocks into a rudimentary lean-to. Sighing in relief now that his jobs were done, he shimmied under the large warm blanket and surrendered almost immediately to oblivion.

* * *

**A/N: **So there we have the set-up. I think I got a little rushed at the end, but Harry was rushed too so I think it passes. Hopefully I'll get the next chapter up soon and Lara can meet Harry properly. Also I'm aware that the guy probably wasn't a cannibal, merely an insane nut-job. But Lara wasn't at her best at the time.


	2. When Harry Met Lara

**A/N: **So here's the next chappy. This time from Lara's perspective. I'll probably end up swapping between Harry and Lara depending on who will have the most interesting perspective on events.

Also, I own nothing, but I did manage to get a good deal on a replacement set of kidneys.

* * *

Lara Croft drifted among soothing dreams. She was in Cambodia with her father scouring the jungles around Andoung Tuek in search of the legendary Temple of Rama. She hadn't been all that involved, only being 12 at the time but sharing the adventure with her father had felt amazing. She dreamt of the day she got lost in the forbidding forest. She had wandered off, she'd seen a gigantic pitcher plant and just had to explore. By the time she looked around she realised that her father and his team had all disappeared.

Even at that age she had been very independent. She had tried shouting, but the chorus of birds and other animals had more than drowned her out. So she had tried to follow their trail. She didn't know which way they were going, or which way they had came but she had reasoned that either direction was fine. One would lead to her father; the other to camp. Her father's friend, Conrad Roth, had given her a few pointers on how to follow a trail and she thought she knew enough to get herself to safety.

Four hours later a very worried Richard Croft had returned to their camp after scouring the jungle for his daughter. He found her tired, bruised and sporting many cuts and grazes, curled up sleeping soundly in their shared tent. Lara Croft may get lost, but she always found her way back eventually. Her father had said she was like a bad cold that he just couldn't shake.

Cold. Her dreams shifted and she was reliving the sinking of the Endurance. She had been reading a book. Re-reading, actually. A journal left by an early British ships captain, describing the ferocity of the storms in an area he had dubbed the 'Devil's Sea'. The ship had been tossing violently all evening, a truly impressive storm smiting its wrath on the ocean. She had put headphones in in an attempt to block out the noise while she tried to relax. She was confident that Grim, their cantankerous Scottish helmsman would get them through the storm safely. As he always said 'If it's wet, I can sail on it'. She'd known Grim for as long as she'd known Roth, he was an old friend of her father's and she trusted him to see them through.

Except he hadn't. She had been pulled from her studies by an almighty rending noise coming from towards the prow and had got up from her bunk to investigate. As she was standing the ship had lurched beneath her and she had been thrown against the bulkhead in her room. Luckily she hadn't hit her head too hard and was able to stagger out of her room, only to be met with a wall of white water.

She had barely escaped the sinking, even now she had no idea who it was that had saved her by opening ladder bulkhead just before she drowned. She had tried to jump across the gaping chasm ripped through the ship by the unrelenting sea and had almost made it. Her grip had slipped, she had fallen.

Now her dream shifted to the cave where she had woken up last time. She had been tied up and left dangling, all around her were more of the grisly cocoons, each holding a desiccated corpse. By now the dream was a nightmare, she struggled and shouted but no one came and the bonds would not loosen. She had burned herself when she managed to escape, the only way she could find to get free was to burn her bonds.

Then she fell, and her world had almost disappeared into a mist of agony as a length of rusty rebar impaled her through her belly. Somehow she had summoned the strength to pull the rebar out, almost passing out in the process. She hadn't though. She managed to stagger from the cave chamber into another and immediately regretted it. Strung up in the chamber was another corpse, this one she recognised. Steph, from the Endurance, one of the student interns Whitman brought along. So young and pretty, now dead and hung up in some kind of twisted offering on an ancient shrine. In her nightmare the corpse's face shifted from Steph to Reyes to Sam, then seemed to shrivel up. The corpse looked up at her, Sam's face now a cruel mockery of what it had been, eye sockets long scoured out by maggots empty and weeping. She looked at Lara accusingly, this was all Lara's fault. She had been the one to argue for heading into the storm, even in the face of Whitman's disapproval. Lara backed away from the corpse of her oldest friend, the dream now breaking down. This was all her fault.

Lara awoke gasping, Sam's name on her lips. It took her a moment to realise where she was, though that still didn't really explain the condition she was in.

She was under a warm fluffy blanket. It was covered in what looked for all the world like winged golden golf balls. She was _sharing _the large blanket with someone else. A man.

She remembered now, she had escaped the cave and he'd been right there. He had offered to help with her wounds, she couldn't remember any more. She must have been injured worse than she had thought.

She was careful not to move. Her awakening hadn't woken the man and she didn't want to alert him until she had some idea of the new situation in which she found herself.

The fluffy blanket aside, she was in a pretty decent lean-to shelter. Outside it sounded like the storm had abated. She could hear the cawing of ravens and screeching of gulls not far off, and below them she could still hear the crash of waves against the beaten cliff-face.

So she was probably still on the cliff. She didn't have anything she could use to defend herself, though it seemed her unknown companion was in a similar situation and he really didn't seem all that dangerous. She felt rested but, more importantly, she couldn't feel any of her wounds from last night. She surreptitiously felt for the hole at her waist, but was unable to find anything but smooth skin. That was impossible. An injury like that didn't just magically disappear, unless she had dreamt the whole thing. But if that was the case how did she get to be on a cliff overlooking the sea on an island in the middle of the pacific?

She wanted answers, but she was loath to awaken the mysterious man quite yet. She looked over at the man. It was hard to judge but he looked fairly short, probably not much taller than Lara herself. He sported a mop of black hair that was sticking up in all directions. His eyes were closed but she noticed a pair of spectacles beside him which she assumed he needed to see. He was probably a bit older than her, though it was hard to judge. His skin was quite pale and made him look young, especially in the relaxation of sleep. On the other hand she could see a couple of scars on his forehead and neck that suggested he'd had an interesting life.

Of course if he'd been stuck on this island for any length of time, and if the inhabitants were anything like the one she'd already met then she imagined he would have a lot more to show for it than just a couple of scars.

As she was watching him his breathing changed slightly. He was waking up. He didn't open his eyes though, probably doing exactly what Lara herself had done just a couple of minutes earlier.

"There's no need to play coy, I know you're awake," she said with the slightest amusement at the similarity of their actions. She hoped the levity of her words would conceal her significant unease.

He cracked one eye open and squinted at her in the light. "'M not playing coy," he grumbled, "just don't wanna wake up yet."

Lara almost laughed at the absurdity of his statement. They were almost certainly stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere and he was acting like a grumpy teenager. Until the full gravity of the situation returned and she sobered.

"Please, can you… I was on a ship, the Endurance? I know some of the crew made it to the island," she said almost pleadingly, "have you seen anyone? Can you help me find them?"

His eyes opened at that and he met her gaze, deep sympathy swimming in sharp green eyes. He sat up and looked down at her.

"I only washed up here last night, and you're the first person I've seen I'm afraid," he apologised while Lara sat herself up as well. "That said, of course I'll help. I was planning on a bit of exploration today anyway."

"By the way." He smiled and extended a hand. "I'm Harry Potter, nice to meet you."

She grasped his hand and found it both strong and soft, a strange combination. "Lara Croft, likewise." As she spoke her stomach rumbled loudly, she blushed.

His smile broadened and he stood up, shrugging off the bizarre blanket as he did so. "Well then, Miss Croft. I believe we need to find ourselves some breakfast." He held out his hand again to help her to her feet. "Then we'll start looking for your friends."

As he stood Lara was able to get a better look at 'Harry'. She was right about his height, he was only a couple of inches taller than her and his build was somewhere between lithe and wiry. He was wearing strange clothes that looked like a cross between a bathrobe and a leather trench-coat. The clothes were in amazingly good condition for having 'washed up' on the island, in fact Lara would struggle to call them anything but well maintained.

She took his hand and nodded as she pulled her upright. Suddenly she remembered the mysteriously disappearing injuries.

"I, um… Wasn't I injured last night?" she asked unsurely.

At her question Harry's face became a little less carefree. "Yeah, pretty badly too." he said, his voice serious, "I'm not even sure how you were still standing after all that. I patched you up as best I could."

That confused Lara, she couldn't find any of the injuries from last night. There were a few bruises here and there and she still felt a bit like her entire body had been used as a punching bag but there was nothing else. She stopped and looked down at herself, checking again that she really didn't have a hole through her abdomen.

She looked up when she heard Harry chuckling.

"Perhaps I can explain, I," he said with his smile now back in place. He pulled out a foot long smooth unornamented stick and waved it. "Am a wizard." The blanket vanished.

Lara stared at where the blanket have been. She stared at Harry. She stared at the stick. She looked back at the now absent blanket. She blinked.

"I. But that. Um. Ok. So you…?" She gestured between his stick and herself. "And that was it?"

His smile broadened again and his eyes twinkled. "Yep!" he said cheerfully. "Well, a bit more complicated than that, but you get the general idea."

Lara had to shake herself to stop from staring again. "Well, thanks," she said lamely. "Can your magic find Sam and the others?" She couldn't believe she was asking that, but in the face of disappearing blankets there wasn't really anything to do but try and roll with the punches.

His smile faded a bit. "It's not quite that easy," he said and Lara was unable to resist an unladylike snort, it never is. "Usually I could use magic to help speed up the search, but I can't apparate at all here, the wards stop me."

Apparate? Wards? Her expression must have communicated her questions to Harry.

"Apparition is like magical teleportation. Wards are magical protections that suppress certain things within their area of influence," he explained, "this island seems to stop all forms of magical transportation, as well as a few other things." He smiled sheepishly.

This guy could teleport, and even _he _was stuck here? That didn't bode well.

"Wait, so what exactly can your magic do?" Lara asked. She was fascinated by the possibilities and getting a handle on their capabilities would be imperative if they wanted to work well together.

Harry thought for a moment. "Well, I can heal most wounds pretty quickly. I can conjure fire or clean water when needed. I can duplicate or multiply any food we find. I can also probably make any equipment we need so long as it's fairly simple," he said listing the items off on his fingers.

Lara nodded, trying hard to think about surviving and not to be too much in awe of the power of his magic. Basically, while Harry still seemed stuck on the island he was able to make their lives pretty comfortable. That certainly explained why he was so unconcerned about their situation.

"So we don't need to worry much about basic survival then?" she asked after another moment of silent wonder. "That's helpful."

He nodded. "So shall we try and find some breakfast? I hope you know how to hunt, I'm pants at it," he said with a grin.

Lara smiled back. "I'm not bad, but I'll need a weapon unless we want to be eating rabbits. Any ideas?"

"Uhhh, well, I can't really do guns. Well, I can do _guns_. Or things that look like guns. But I can't do bullets, the gunpowder either doesn't work or works too well." He smiled sheepishly.

Lara frowned and thought about it. "Well, OK. Judging by where we are we can probably find deer if we can find a nicely wooded area. I can track them and you can hit them with some spell or something from your stick, right?"

He nodded. "That sounds like a plan."

They moved off together, following the cliff ledge across the face. Lara reasoned that it would probably lead to some kind of gully or valley that they could climb up more easily than just trying to scale the cliff face. Harry was happy to follow her lead on this. He said his bush-craft skills were limited mostly to not being eaten. She had a hard time imagining some of the animals he described, and was extremely grateful she'd never run into them.

Lara's hunch proved correct, but not in the way she'd hoped. They soon found a valley, but it was completely blocked by a downed WW2 era bomber. The cliff ledge continued on the other side of the gorge, but to reach it they would both have to clamber across the precarious looking wreck.

"Any ideas, magic boy?" she asked.

"We want to get over there, right?" He gestured to the other side of the gorge.

Lara nodded. "The cliff wall here still looks unstable, I think we're better off continuing round further. Can you get us across without having to climb on that death-trap?" She gestured at the crumbling bomber.

He thought for a moment. "Well I could float you across easy enough, but I'll need to make some kind of bridge for myself anyway. That shouldn't take long."

He looked around a bit before coming to stand in front of a large tree protruding from the sheer rock. He pulled out his wand and brandished it like a conductor. A flash of light severed the tree at the trunk and as it began to fall he seemed to catch it with his magic before floating it over to bridge the gap. He looked at it for a moment longer before he waved his wand again and the _entire_ tree morphed and changed shape. Not much, but now there was a large flat platform to walk across.

It was amazing. And humbling. Lara had never seen anything like it before.

He turned back to her. "Ladies first," he said with a bow.

Shaking her head to stop herself gaping like a fool Lara smiled at the cheerful wizard. The bridge wasn't exactly pretty, but it served its purpose admirably. She could get used to this.

They continued on for another hour or so and Lara came to appreciate Harry's company. He was what Lara would call an 'interested amateur' in history. While he couldn't really talk about the details of Yamatai like Sam could, he could still bring a new perspective to her own.

According to Harry the Kingdom of Yamatai was a known entity to the 'wizarding world' -a term that Lara filed away to investigate later- and really _was_ ruled by people with supernatural powers. At least, that's what Harry's research had suggested. He said that there was perhaps even less information about the Kingdom in magical texts, because they had almost all disappeared along with Yamatai.

For Lara talking to him was a truly eye-opening experience. Her father had always put a lot of store in obscure myths and stories of the supernatural. Absurdly so, in Lara's opinion. For Lara there had never been enough evidence for any of his stories. Now she wasn't so sure. Harry was being pretty cagey about filling her in on the broader picture but she was able to glean that there was a world-wide secret society of magic users, and even entire magical civilizations. All completely hidden from 'muggles'.

She hadn't missed Harry mention that even he didn't recognise some of the magic around this island, it seemed that there truly were more things in heaven and earth than she'd dreamt of. She decided that she would look over all her father's old projects. She now believed that at least some of his ideas could have a train of truth to them. If she could get Harry to give her some hints as well, that could only help her chances. She thought he might be amenable.

Eventually she started to reflect more on just how much she'd missed. If only she'd been less blinkered and realised the danger this island represented, no-one need have died in the sinking.

Harry, though, was constantly upbeat and was always quick to pull her from bouts of self pity and guilt over her role in the sinking of the Endurance.

"Listen Lara, it was no more your fault than it was the fault of the guy who sold you the boat. Or the guy who financed the expedition," he explained. "Everything that happens is dependant on everything that went before. Just because you had some small hand in that list of things does not make you responsible for the end result."

Lara hadn't been sold. "But coming here, into the Triangle, was _my_ idea. If I hadn't said anything then no one would have been hurt," she argued.

Harry has smiled sadly then and shook his head as if to shake off a memory. "You were right though Lara. You were looking for Yamatai, where do you think you are now? You did the absolute best you could with the information at your disposal. It was your job to find the island. If the storm was too bad then that was the job of the navigator or captain to call it. Not yours." Now he grasped her shoulder and stared her in the eye. "You are smart, but you can't do everything, and you can't take all the blame when you did exactly what was asked. You couldn't have known."

She had given him a shy smile, but still wasn't happy.

After a while they found something that made Lara smile properly. The remains of a camp, and it looked to be the crew of the Endurance. They had left behind Reyes' hip bag along with a radio and the hand-held camera Sam had been using to record her 'Behind the scenes' film.

She was unable to get anything more than static from the radio. Harry said that was to be expected, and then had tried to explain why. All Lara really got from the explanation was that magic and electronics don't mix.

Nevertheless she wasn't going to just leave the radio. She assumed that it had been left for her, or other survivors. If that was the case it probably worked at least intermittently. They wouldn't have bothered leaving it for her if it was useless.

They moved on, now finally moving into the island rather than merely around it. Eventually the gully they were walking along opened up into a broad lightly wooded valley. More crows took flight sounding their raucous cries as Lara and Harry entered a small clearing. At the far end of the clearing Lara could see a deer, she immediately held her hand out to stop Harry so that he wouldn't scare it away.

She gestured to Harry's wand and pointed towards the deer. He palmed his wand and took aim before sending a bright red flash of light at the animal. The moment it issued from his wand the creature bolted and the red light splashed against the tree behind.

Lara levelled an unimpressed look at Harry. "Don't you have anything a little less... Flashy?" she said with a certain amount of incredulity. "You won't hit anything with that unless it's blind."

Harry shrugged apologetically. "I've got a few more ideas, but I figured I should try the simplest first," he said by way of explanation. "Most of the others are a bit more effort."

Lara shook her head at that and moved on wordlessly. Soon they were met with a grisly sight. Ahead, hanging from a tree over a brook was another corpse like the ones she'd seen in the scavenger's cave. Behind the corpse was what looked like a WW2 era bunker in significant disrepair.

"Oh God!" she cried, "another one. What happened here?"

Harry's face lost all trace of his former good humour. "I don't suppose there's any chance that this is the work of the psycho you met earlier?" he asked grimly.

Lara looked at him in surprise. There were a lot of similarities. "It's possible I suppose, there were a few corpses strung up like that in the cave."

Harry nodded. "We should be careful anyway, this island's starting to give me the willies and that's not a common occurrence," he said mysteriously.

After a moment he spoke again, "I don't suppose you're any good with a bow?"

Now Lara saw what he was looking at, the suspended corpse had a strung bow wrapped around its torso. "I'll manage I think, Roth taught me how to use most weapons when I was out with Dad as a kid."

Harry gave her another look, this one questioning. "Sounds like your childhood was almost as interesting as mine," he said, traces of his good humour returning. "Well if that's the case then _you_ can do the hunting, I'm not sure I want to receive any more of those scathing looks."

Lara was taken aback. "I wasn't… I didn't mean… I was just joking." She looked down.

She heard him chuckling and looked back up. "So was I Lara, don't worry about it." That earned him an embarrassed smile from Lara. "But I think the bow will be better than anything I can do for game hunting unless we find something bigger and slower than a deer."

Another wave of his wand and the bow ripped itself from the arboreal remains and flew into Harry's empty hand. He immediately passed it across to Lara. "Now you just need an arrow."

She gave him a funny look. "Uh, I'll need more than one…" She trailed off when Harry merely waved his wand in front of her face in response.

He bent down and picked up a pebble from the stream-bed, almost immediately it grew in length until it became, unmistakably, an arrow. He then flicked his wand at the arrow and the single arrow suddenly became a pile of arrows. Finally, harry picked up another larger stone and again its shape began to warp and shift. Moments later he passed her a quiver full of arrows.

"I hope that's enough for now?" he asked playfully.

Lara nodded dumbly, she was still staggered by what magic could accomplish with barely a moment's effort.

"Then lets get breakf… Uhh. Lunch now I suppose." He said, returning to a more businesslike demeanour.

"What about…" Lara looked up at the still hanging corpse.

Harry blinked as if the thought hadn't even occurred to him before his eyes softened again. He nodded gently.

More waves of his wand dropped the body to the ground gently, excavated a shallow grave, then covered the body. Lara searched around for a suitable rock to use as a grave-marker. She settled on a small rock veined with pink quartz and placed it on the hasty grave.

Lara moved towards the bunker, it would probably do as a shelter from the elements. She knew Harry could do just about anything with that magic of his, but some habits died hard and one of the earliest was if lost in the wilderness you do _not_ pass up the chance of proper shelter. The door was stuck fast, it didn't even give when she tried kicking it down.

"Stand aside Lara!" called Harry from behind her.

She moved to the side and watched as Harry again gestured with his wand, shooting a bright blue light at the door, it dissolved to dust instantly.

"Does that work on people?" Lara asked uncomfortably.

Harry wasn't really paying attention as he moved towards the door. "No, actually, it's just for blasting inanimate stuff. Don't ask me how it knows the difference."

Lara understood what he was saying. "But there _is_ one that does that to humans?" she pressed.

Harry shrugged before sticking his head in the door. "Almost certainly. Don't know it though, seems a bit unnecessary really." He looked back at her. "Looks fine, bit of a mess though."

They both moved into the small space and looked around. The mess was just what Lara had expected. It was littered with animal bones and bottles, at the back a dark shaft descended deep into the ground.

Harry lit his wand like a torch and shone it into the hole, trying to get an idea of what was at the bottom. Lara couldn't see much, but it didn't look like there was much there.

"Right," Harry said. "Shall we make camp here? I'll secure the bunker so that no one we don't have any problems if there's any more crazies living on this island, then we really need to find some food. Its been more than 24 hours since I last ate."

Lara nodded her assent. "I'll go out and see if I can find us some food while you make this place more comfortable."

Harry reluctantly agreed, accepting that he wasn't going to be of much use stalking a deer. He complained that his standard stealth spells were being nullified by one of the wards on the island.

As she turned to leave he called out. "And Lara, be careful, yeah? I don't want to have to patch you up again." His gaze was serious even if his tone was light-hearted.

It turned out that the glade surrounding their new camp was home to a sizeable herd of deer. Lara decided to practice a little with the bow before she tried to stalk one of the animals. She'd only get one shot, and getting close enough was a painstaking business. She was relieved to find that Roth's advice to her was right on the money. With enough focus and will she was able to hit her target almost every time.

As she stalked quietly through the glade on the hunt for the deer she didn't see anything else suspicious or sinister, something for which she was immeasurably grateful. After the revelations and guilt earlier in the day she was glad of the opportunity to focus on her stalking. She had been hunting a number of times with her father and later with Roth. She had a natural ability to move almost silently through the undergrowth and it helped calm the hidden turmoil still stirring in her mind.

She really was grateful for Harry's presence. Not just because she probably wouldn't have survived her wounds without his miraculous healing, but because his presence gave her something other than her own faults and mistakes to focus on. He also made her feel at ease. It was a bit like the feeling she got around Roth, or her father before he disappeared. He gave the impression of having seen _everything_, that nothing the world could throw at him could really knock him off balance.

He hadn't talked about his past at all, instead steering the conversation towards the island and Lara's own studies. His own life was boring, he said. Lara didn't believe him, you didn't come by his confidence in the face of danger without a _lot_ of experience. She wasn't going to push him though. Well, maybe she would a little, but it would be subtle. Lara had inherited her father's fascination with mysteries, even if she had tried to steer clear of the supernatural.

After more than an hour stalking the small wood, which she now realised was completely cut off from the rest of the island by more sheer cliffs, she was able to fell a healthy looking buck. She'd never had to prepare an animal before, but she'd seen it done. She set about her work, only cringing slightly when she cut the poor animal open with one of Harry's arrows.

Just as she was preparing to head back, having taken enough meat from the dear and found some edible fruits, the radio crackled into life.

#Csshh# "- is Conrad Roth, Captain of the Endurance. We are shipwrecked on an island inside the Dragon's Triangle-"

Lara scrambled for the radio on her hip. "Roth! You're alive!" she cried in relief.

"Lara! Easy, easy. Are you OK? What happened?" Her old mentor sounded worried, but his voice helped quell Lara's lingering worries.

"I'm OK, Roth. I remember the beach, then everything went black. I woke up in a cave, there was a crazy man and some dead bodies." She could feel her emotions slipping as she told the story. "Steph was there Roth, she's dead."

"Oh God, where are you now Lara, are you safe?" His voice was now even more concerned.

"I'm safe. I met another man. Harry. He's been helping me," she explained in a rush, "we're trying to find the rest of the crew. Roth, I'm so sorry, if I hadn't-"

"Lara, listen. I sent an SOS from the Endurance before it went down. Hopefully someone heard it. I've spoken to the others, we're regrouping at my location." Lara didn't let him finish.

"Can you come and get us-" She was on the edge of tears now. While she'd been with Harry the horror of the last two days had felt distant and dulled. Now it all came roaring back, and Lara was clutching the radio like a lifeline.

"I can't, Lara. I need to stay here," said Roth's voice, soothing her nerves again. "You can do this Lara. Remember Snowdon. All you and Harry need to do is keep moving. And stay together, you'll get through this."

Lara smiled wanly at the little radio. "Thanks Roth."

#Cshh# "-ready for this Lara. I know you a-" #sreeee# "-nd keep your radio on." Roth's voice finished amid the returning static.

Lara sat for what felt like an age staring at the hand-held. She _could_ do this. And with Harry to help they would all make it. That she vowed.

* * *

**A/N: **So there we go, a bit longer than the first chapter. To begin with the chapters will probably each cover a day in game (Camp to camp). So length is a bit variable.

Steph isn't exactly an OC, the devs created her character (She's the blonde one in the 'Crew of the Endurance' concept art image I think) originally, and she was going to be the one strung up in the Scavenger's Cave shrine. There was going to be a bit more heartache over her death at various points early on but they decided to scrap her and leave the corpse nameless. In memory of Steph!

So the story so far is pretty much following the game at this stage. I'm just introducing the characters to each other at the moment so I don't want to depart too far too fast but the butterfly is beating its wings and change is a-coming. It won't necessarily be for the better.

On a somewhat related note: I'd forgotten just how rage inducing the quicktime events could be. Mash E to leave a review!


	3. The Man Cave

**A/N: **So here's chapter three, we're back with Harry for the time being. In game terms we're still in tutorial-land so it's still pretty quiet on the western front.

[Insert platitudes about ownership]

* * *

Harry awoke from his habitual light sleep early the next morning to the faint sound of singing drifting from the now blocked subterranean shaft.

Lara had come back quite late last night, and had obviously been crying. Harry had been concerned that she might have run into more psychos. He was grateful to hear that she had been contacted by the captain of her ship. The man, Conrad Roth, was obviously someone Lara trusted implicitly, and he had a plan. That said, Harry wasn't entirely sure how to find the man. 'Regroup at my position' was a fine sentiment, but when lost on a large, hostile and mountainous island that would be easier said than done.

He hadn't even explained where he was. Harry assumed he was just as overwhelmed by the news of Lara's survival as she was his. Still, it did prove that the radio could work, if only intermittently. It also proved that, whatever else happened, Lara still had friends alive on the island. Her determination to find them was now utterly unshakable.

Harry knew that Lara blamed herself for the situation she and her companions found themselves in. He could see that she felt responsible for them, and would do anything necessary to get them all back off the island alive. Much like he had been when he'd been thrown in at the deep end she was obviously feeling overwhelmed and he knew there wasn't much he could do to lighten her burden. She had taken this task upon herself as a kind of penance, and Harry could understand her thinking even if he didn't agree with it.

After all, it really wasn't so dissimilar from a few situations Harry himself had been in. His heart went out to the girl and he resolved to help her in any way he could.

By the time she had tearfully returned to the bunker Harry had finished his modifications. First he had transfigured a new door and trapdoor, to keep the elements and any unsavories out during the night. He also added some limited magical backup. An unbreakable charm in the doors was followed with some perimeter wards at both entrances and new unbreakable panes of glass were conjured into the pillbox slit windows.

Satisfied that the bunker would now be safe for the night Harry had moved on to making it more comfortable. He vanished most of the junk, and used the remains to transfigure a couple of beds and comfy seats. He tidied the area up with a few cleaning charms and left it at that. He wasn't going to decorate the place, that would be a complete waste of effort, and might land him in trouble if he forgot to revert his changes.

He had told Lara yesterday about magic, in vague terms. He got the feeling that she had been able to extrapolate from his broad-strokes answers about the nature of wizards and witches and she probably had a better idea of their secret society than he'd like. He'd told her, however, because attempting to hide magic from any intelligent muggle, as the young archeologist obviously was, for an extended length of time in a confined space would be nigh impossible. At least this way she wouldn't go blabbing about it to all her friends and acquaintances. He'd made sure she understood the importance of secrecy.

That said he certainly hadn't told her _everything_. He was still undecided on what he would do once their little adventure was over. He knew that he should _Obliviate_ the knowledge from her mind, or risk a serious slap on the wrist from ICW if it ever came out. Harry had never liked _Obliviation_ even if he understood its necessity, it felt to him like the most personal of intrusions. At the moment Harry was deferring that decision until they got off the island. Even at this early stage he felt he could trust Lara to keep the secret, and if he could trust her then he would not go rummaging about in her head.

Over his time wandering the world, close to a decade, he had played fast and loose with the Statute of Secrecy a few times. He hadn't had any issues stemming from it, though he had had to _Obliviate_ most of them afterwards. A very few had proven trustworthy enough to leave with the knowledge, and so Harry had left them be.

That was a little scary, really. A whole decade of his life had been spent on what amounted to an adventure holiday. He still remembered telling his friends his plans. He'd expected Hermione at least to explode in indignation. None of them had. Ginny had looked a little put out and Ron had been confused, but they had all accepted his decision with minimal fuss. Hermione said later that that was probably because they didn't expect his 'time out' to last ten years.

Harry had said he wanted a little bit of space, and some peace and quiet after finally defeating Voldemort in what would have been his final year at Hogwarts. That was a little bit of a lie. Really he hadn't had a clue what he was actually going to do with his life. His life, up until that moment had been carefully orchestrated and directed. Suddenly he was totally free; suddenly he needed to choose for himself.

So he'd done what he'd always wanted an opportunity to do. Nothing. He had enough money to see him living a comfortable life without ever having to work. So why work? He'd gone out and travelled the world, and it had been good. Until he realised that life had moved on without him. He hadn't lost his friends, really, it was that the Harry shaped space in their lives had gradually been filled by other things. That had been a bit of a shock to the system. He returned his attention to the here and now.

He got to his feet and stumbled tiredly over to the ladder shaft. He opened the trapdoor to get a better idea of the music. It had a strange haunting quality, it actually sounded like someone singing.

Behind him the now louder music awoke Lara. Unlike Harry it seemed she was a morning person. She seemed to have that inhuman ability to wake up, blink once and be fully awake. Harry both envied and feared that ability.

"What's that, music?" Harry really was impressed just how quickly she could transition from unconscious to fully aware.

"Sounds that way, traditional Japanese singing?" he suggested.

Lara shook her head. "Sounds more like Korean. Where's it coming from? The tunnels?"

He nodded. "Yeah, don't worry though. No one's getting through the shaft, it's locked up tight."

Lara looked uneasy. "We might need to go down it," she said unsurely. "I couldn't find any other paths out of the valley while I was out hunting. The tunnels probably connect to other bunkers around the island."

That didn't sound like a good idea to Harry. In fact going looking for the source of the creepy music on an island that was apparently home to at least one murderous psychopath was pretty much at the bottom of his list of things to do today. He wasn't too worried that a muggle could get the best of him, but the wards were still playing on his mind. There was more to this island than met the eye. It wouldn't do to be caught off guard.

Despite her assertion that the only way forward was down Lara obviously felt similarly to Harry on the prospect of delving into the tunnels. The two spent the morning exploring the little valley they had discovered but ultimately Harry had to agree, the best way forward was probably down the shaft.

At least the singing had stopped a couple of hours ago.

Harry lifted the heavy cap he'd created off the shaft to expose the steel rung ladder. He glanced from the dark shaft to Lara. "Ladies first?"

Lara rolled her eyes. "And they say chivalry's dead," she said drily. Nevertheless, she moved to clamber onto the ladder.

An idea occurred to Harry as she did so, and he quickly conjured some bluebell flames onto a short switch of wood. This way at least she'd be able to see.

Harry followed right behind -or above- Lara in her descent. Ultimately it was a bit anticlimactic. They both reached the bottom of the shaft without any fanfare and looked around the small dank space.

"Look at these markings," gasped Lara. "I wonder who drew these."

"I don't know who drew them but I think I know who it is," said Harry while looking over the image of a female figure with what he believed to be sunlight emanating from her head. "If that's a sun-" he gestured at the crude circle with lines radiating from it "-then that's probably the Sun Queen."

"Himiko..." breathed Lara. She stood back and looked around the small room. "But this is WW2 era, why would Japanese soldiers be painting images of a centuries old queen?"

"I think these paintings are a bit more recent than WW2," said Harry as he looked more closely at the female figure. "If I had to guess I'd have said it might even be worship. But why would some marooned travellers start worshipping a millennia dead Queen?"

Lara just shook her head, just as stumped as he was. "We should carry on, we might find more clues deeper in."

While Harry agreed that that was likely, he also thought it likely that they might find some religious nutjob deeper in too. Those paintings looked very recent. He rolled his wand in his hand nervously.

Harry decided to take the lead as they moved into the tunnels below the bunker. Lara looked like she could handle herself but he knew the bow she was wielding was far from being an ideal weapon in such an enclosed space. She was also young, and while she was handling the situation amazingly well, Harry could see she was close to being overwhelmed.

They had to traipse through long tunnels filled to knee-height with stagnant water before he caught sight of a light up ahead. He tensed himself, expecting to meet some kind of crazy wild man. Instead he found a small living space. There was no one there, though that was small comfort in light of everything else it held.

The walls were daubed in white paint like that they'd seen earlier, images of the Sun Queen figure repeated over and over again. To the left was a closed room from which could be heard a faint crackling noise. The entire room smelled of spoiled or rotting meat. On rough cut shelves around all the walls were a selection of skulls, both animal and human. Just in case Harry hadn't reached his daily quota of creepy yet.

Definitely the home of another crazy guy. Or possibly the same crazy guy as the one Lara had run into. It was quite a distance off, but they hadn't really seen much evidence of significant occupation anywhere as of yet. It was possible that the guy had a number of safe-houses dotted around the island. That was by far the explanation Harry preferred, and so he was pretty much resigned to it being wrong.

As Lara came up behind him she caught scent of the rotting meat. "Oh, God! What is _that_?" she said while trying not to gag.

"Seems whoever lived here had a larder of sorts. The meat's spoiled." He looked into the room holding the meat. "It doesn't look human though."

Lara did not look comforted. "Those are though." She pointed at the skulls.

Harry nodded in agreement as he continued to look around the room.

"Good Lord, you were right, they _were_ worshipping Himiko," she gasped. She had just pried open the door to the 'larder'.

Harry walked up behind her and saw what she was talking about, it was a small shrine, in the eastern style, to the light emitting female figure, Himiko. Arrayed around the painted figure was a large number of lit candles. Beneath the table hosting the shrine Harry could see another corpse, preserved like the one they'd found hanging the day before.

"Do you know what this means?" Lara asked in quiet excitement. "There must be _real_ evidence of Himiko on the island. Possibly even written records. There's no way this guy could be the remnant of an indigenous population. He has to have been stranded here too!"

"I'm more worried about the fact that he's obviously gone off the deep end," Harry commented humourlessly. "And judging by the number of wrecks, he's not likely to be the only guy around."

Lara still seemed unable to curb her enthusiasm. "But don't you see? A whole society being reborn from thousand year old ashes!"

Harry had to admit it was a little interesting. But... "Interesting? Yes. More interesting than making sure my head doesn't join some other bloke's skull collection? Not quite."

That got through to the young archeologist. She nodded reluctantly. "We should get going, it looks like this... Uuhhh... Dwelling is near the surface. We should get up there and see what else we can… Wait"

Harry sighed as Lara was once again sidetracked. This time by a small bronze strongbox. She opened it up and gasped reverently.

"It's a Hannya mask! And an old one too." She turned the mask this way and that in admiration.

"Japanese theatre, right?" asked Harry. He wasn't any where near Lara's seemingly bottomless knowledge of history, but he'd picked up a few things during his time in Japan.

Lara nodded absently. "It might even be 17th century!" she said excitedly.

Harry frowned at that. "But the stories of Yamatai are from the 2nd century?" he asked in some confusion.

"Yayoi period, so until the 4th century actually." She cottoned-on to what Harry was suggesting and her eyes widened slightly. "Oh... So what's a mask from a thousand years later doing here?"

Harry responded with a shrug. "I suppose the simplest answer is that Yamatai has been hoovering up this part of the Pacific for a _long_ time."

Lara nodded. "But still, this is the best early Noh mask I've ever seen, it's exceptional!" She immediately went to put it reverently in Reyes' hip bag, which they'd decided to bring with them to carry the items and food they needed.

Harry just rolled his eyes at her behaviour, thinking of another brunette of his acquaintance, before tapping the mask with his wand a couple of times. The first was an _Infragillus_ Charm to stop the mask from getting damaged and the second was the _Diminuendo _Charm to shrink it. Harry had the feeling that they might accumulate quite a collection and he didn't want to be carting about suitcases of the things. He just wished he could remember the incantation for the Undetectable Extension Charm. It wasn't exactly the kind of spell you needed to use every day, so he'd never bothered to memorize it.

He'd figured he could always just check a reference book if he needed a new expanded bag. Hah, he hadn't quite thought that one all the way through. He'd kept his books in the bag itself.

As the mask shrunk Lara panicked for a moment before Harry explained exactly what he'd done. She smiled and thanked him a little sheepishly. Harry was grateful to see that she had finally exhausted the wonder that could be found in the noisome and squalid living space, she moved towards the only other exit with her cold-fire torch held out in front of her.

They both waded through some more partially flooded tunnels, passed more items of graffiti. The sun was a common theme, but they did see a new one. To Harry it looked like some kind of three-way ying-yang sign. Lara disagreed and said it was a whirlpool or cyclone, probably referencing the weather about the island. Harry couldn't see that himself, even after tilting his head, but he wasn't about to question the expert on the matter.

As they went further the tunnels became more and more dilapidated, until eventually they were having to squeeze carefully between broken timber spars and fallen lumps of concrete. While Harry could have cleared the way without much difficulty, he would have had to reinforce the structure around the collapses to ensure safety. It was actually faster to shimmy through the small gaps, the collapses were all old and it didn't look to be in imminent danger of further collapses.

Plus it meant Lara's clothes were soaked through, Harry wasn't complaining. He shook that thought off quickly, they had much more important things to worry about.

After some more time in the sunken tunnels they finally found another ladder in a similar small room to the first. Lara had already started climbing it before Harry had managed to push himself through the partially collapsed tunnel. He followed her up.

They had been underground for quite some time, it was already well into the night and the full moon was high. As the cold night air hit them Lara started shivering and looked at Harry.

"Why, exactly are you warm and dry," she said slowly and with a hint of menace in her tone, "while I am freezing and soaked to the skin?"

Harry made a point of looking as surprised and repentant as he could manage. "Oh. Uh. Sorry about that, I completely forgot!"

Her level gaze communicated quite clearly that she wasn't believing any of it. She looked pointedly at his wand then waved her hand up and down to indicate to herself. "_If _you would be so kind."

Harry grinned at her and swished his wand about a little more grandly than was necessary. Moments later and Lara was bone dry, warm and wrapped in a simple bomber jacket.

He was grateful that she was getting used to him magic and what it could do. He'd found that many muggles would simply refuse to believe in magic, even when presented with direct evidence. They clung to the rules they'd learned in throughout their lives and simply would not let go. Some of the excuses for Harry's spells had been truly staggering. Most decided it was some kind of magician's trick, but one guy he'd accidentally shown magic to had immediately decided that Harry was Satan in human form.

That had been embarrassing.

Lara, however, had accepted the idea with remarkably little struggle. From what little Harry knew her father had been rather interested in stories of the supernatural and while Lara had always disregarded them as pseudo-science, as soon as she was shown concrete proof she really had little option but to accept it.

There had been a couple of moments where she had been obviously concerned by the power of magic, most notably when he had _Reducto_'d the bunker door last night. He hoped that they didn't get into any life and death situations, he wasn't sure how she'd handle magic being used to take a life.

They had come out at the base of a long set of stairs leading up another steep sided gorge. With no other real alternatives Harry shared a look with Lara and they both started the climb.

As they began climbing Harry noticed that the stairs were obviously much older than the bunker they'd just left. Lara voiced similar thoughts. "These stairs, they must be from the original Kingdom," she said quietly. "I couldn't even guess at the date though." Harry thought she looked a little frustrated at that.

"Well, I _am_ disappointed, Lara." He grinned cheekily. "Unable to date the heavily worn and almost completely featureless stairs?" He shook his head as if bitterly disappointed.

Lara snorted inelegantly and barged him with her shoulder. "Oh shut up. Next item of priceless history I'll leave for _you_ to date."

At the top of the stairs was another ruined WW2 structure, this one in a far worse state than the bunker they'd just left. In the central area Harry could hear the tell-tale crackling of a fire.

Quietly, so as not to alert any potential crazy people, Harry and Lara rounded the corner into the ruin. The fire was burning down, but still far from burnt out. Harry reckoned it had probably been left untended for maybe a couple of hours.

"Sam," whispered Lara on the other side of the small camp. Louder she said, "Sam was here. This is her journal. It says she met a man called 'Mathias'."

Harry watched as Lara began to read through the most recent entries. Harry had noticed over the last couple of days that Lara had a tendency to talk to herself when trying to deal with a difficult problem. He could hear her muttering from the far side of the camp, but he couldn't make out the specifics. He let her be, there was nothing more annoying than someone giving their unsolicited tuppence worth on issues that were none of their business.

Even after a day of subtle reinforcement, Harry knew that Lara was still feeling guilty about her role in the sinking of the Endurance. It was stupid, of course, but Harry knew from experience that the guilt was only a small part of why people fixated on their feelings of culpability. Really it was a way of hiding from the consequences. In a situation like this, or like the many that Harry had seen personally, it was actually a reasonable short-term coping system. The alternative was to realise, truly understand, that people were _dead_ and the situation was dire.

Mourning was something you didn't have time for in the heat of the moment and so you substitute with guilt. Harry would let her have her guilt, but he'd make sure she used it to strengthen resolve, rather than let it weaken the same.

He didn't think he'd need to do much, under her fresh-out-of-university appearance Harry could see a born survivor. She just didn't know it yet. If she was lucky she would never have to discover it. He hoped his presence could protect her enough that she would need to reach that deep.

Harry turned his attention to preparing the camp for the night. This time he conjured a simple tarpaulin and suspended it over the open area around the fire. He also extinguished the guttering fire to replace it with more bluebell flames. Those flames were smokeless and didn't consume any fuel. Harry knew that they'd last out the night and keep them both warm. He felt he was starting to get the hang of his camping thing. Lara had had plenty of opportunities to explain the difficulties over the last two days. Harry had occupied himself thinking about how he could go about solving those issues.

Another potential issue according to Lara would be wolves. She said she had seen evidence of wolves while out stalking deer and had told Harry to keep an eye out. She had explained that wolves would not usually attack humans, even in packs. She was uncertain though, as on a small island with limited prey populations and low exposure to humans that might not still be the case.

Harry set out a perimeter alert ward along with an animal repelling ward, he didn't know much about warding but his time in Africa had shown just how useful that spell could be. He considered erecting a muggle repelling ward but decided against it. He didn't want Lara waking up in the middle of the night for the toilet and forgetting why she was there. The thought caused the slightest of smirks to cross his features.

As he finished his simple warding he heard Lara's voice rise above the usual muttering.

"It says she was able to contact the rest of the crew and that they were going to meet here in a few hours..." Lara trailed off and seemed to be talking to herself, "but then where did you go? Oh, Sam. I hope you're OK."

Harry moved over to the younger woman and put a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure she'll be fine with that Mathias guy. They'll if he's been here any length of time he probably has some kind of home. They might be spending the night there and coming back here in the morning." That didn't quite sound right to Harry, if that was the case then why did she leave the journal? But it earned him a grateful smile and she calmed just a little, that was what was important. She'd need her head screwed on right if this did turn out for the bad.

* * *

**A/N: **It's a bit shorter, but Lara really didn't get much done on this day in game. Here we can see the beginnings of the butterfly effects; Harry's caution caused them both to get to Sam's camp later than the player does in game, so we don't get to meet Good Guy Mathias. Fortunately, Sam was nice enough to leave her journals dotted around the island for us to find.

We also saw more of what Harry's thinking behind filling Lara in on Magic. He's going to be stuck on the island and in reasonably close proximity to Lara for an unknown length of time. Using magic to heal her was, to his mind, a necessity and there's no way that any other answer would have sufficed. He decided to get it over with. Lara's a practical girl, when a guy performs miracles in front of you and says it's magic, well may as well accept it for now at least.

Don't worry overly about me making this a narrative game 100% completion walk-through (i.e. having Harry and Lara find all the collectables). That's not the intent. If I think the items are important to the character's understanding of the island or other characters then they may find their way in but otherwise they'll be skipped. GPS caches are rather unlikely to be mentioned. I have no doubt that some of the hidden Tombs will be mentioned though I don't know yet which ones.

Also, I've moved Harry's DoB forward a few years (embarrassingly I hadn't realised that Tomb Raider specifically takes place in 2013 and assumed that it was closer to 2008, so I moved the HP timetable forward 4 years to retain Harry's background). It's late January in 2013 (approximated time of year by looking at cherry blossom blooming by latitude) and Harry was born in 1984 (instead of 1980). Reboot!Lara was born in 1992 (14th February, like Old!Lara).

In the next chapter we'll get to some real action. I'm still a little undecided exactly on how Harry's going to play it, and how close I need to keep to TR canon to keep Lara's personality on track. We'll get there. It may end up being rather large.


	4. Homo Homini Lupus

Lara couldn't sleep. Her stomach was tied in knots all night. Every time she drifted off her dreams were haunted again by the image of Steph tied up in the cave. Finally the dream changed, Lara was again crawling through the bone-ridden scavenger's cave. She came upon a large chamber, larger than it had been. All around the walls were faceless figures chanting in time with a slow, deep beat. Like a heartbeat.

In the middle of the cave was a beautiful figure, dressed in all the finery of an Empress. She smiled at Lara beatifically, she spread her arms wide in a welcoming gesture.

As the figure smiled, her face slowly warped and changed, eventually becoming the face of Lara's oldest and best friend. Sam's face, still smiling, spoke. "Thank you, Lara, for making me whole again…"

Even as the new Sam-figure spoke, it started to age. Sams pretty, youthful face was marred by wrinkles and her skin became discoloured. Her limbs became thin and spindly, her body shrank to that of a waif. Lara watched in horror as Sam's features fell away, to be replaced by those of a lady so old that she looked mummified. Finally there was a change, Sam's eyes returned and gazed at Lara with pain and sorrow. She drew a knife from her once magnificent robes and, with one last look at Lara, plunged it into her midriff. The life went from her eyes and the fell backwards.

Lara tried to run to her but was blown back by fierce winds, thrown against the cave walls she screamed Sam's name.

Lara jerked awake, blood still pounding. She lay still for some time, trying to calm herself and slow her breathing. That last dream had shaken her badly. She had no desire to try and return to sleep. It was still the middle of the night, the cold january air nipped at her skin, but she'd take that over more tortuous dreams.

She decided she was rested enough to get up.

She looked at Harry, who was still fast asleep. He was curled up much too close to the fire for Lara's liking, but Harry had said that the fire would not burn either of them. She still wasn't sure she believed him, how could the fire be hot without being able to burn? It made no sense. She could just about accept that physics didn't really apply to magic, but how could it ignore even basic logic?

Then again, the golden-ball blanket that Harry seemed to be attached to had made a reappearance, and that made no sense either. She was beginning to get the impression that 'not making sense' was par for the course with magic. Even Harry didn't know why things worked.

That irked Lara. She was planning to experiment with Harry's magic as much as possible once they were back to safety. Now, though, she accepted that there were far more important things. As her father would say, 'never look a gift-horse in the mouth'.

After rereading Sam's infuriatingly sparse journal for the second time she decided to see if she could forage some more food. If she could find any traces that might give a clue to where Sam had gone, well that would be even better.

Harry claimed that now that he had some food frozen and stored in their bag that they would be fed for as long as necessary. Lara, by now, was willing to accept that. If only just. However, Roth had always told her that you should always have a back-up plan. If, somehow, they lost the little food they had then they could be in trouble. It would be best if they had some to spare.

Besides, she was hungry and she didn't want to awaken Harry quite yet. The beets that she had found growing around the island had really been rather nice. She felt they would be a good breakfast. And she wanted to find Sam, or at least feel like she was doing _something._

Mind made up, she pulled herself to her feet and picked up her bow.

The camp she had Harry had found rested atop a small hill near a widening of the gorge they had walked down last night. On the far side of the camp the hill dropped gradually away and gave way to a broader valley, complete with a small stream. More importantly, there was a lot of undergrowth and Lara was sure she would be able to find something edible without too much effort.

She walked down the slope, lost in thoughts of Sam. She was still extremely worried. She hoped desperately that Sam was right in her estimates of 'Mathias'. Sam always had been rather idealistic and naive, though. She could be like a little kid, so easily excited and seemingly never able to see the possible downsides of a situation.

It was for that reason that she was such a good friend to Lara. While Lara tended towards cynicism and would focus on one small thing to the detriment of all else, Sam would always be there with her relentlessly upbeat attitude and some cheerful and joking comments. She was probably the sole reason Lara hadn't turned into a hermit during her time at UCL. Sam was, much to Lara's chagrin at the time, dragging her away from her work and just generally making sure she didn't completely lose herself in her work.

Suddenly there was a snap and her foot exploded in pain. She reflexively tried to lift it while crying out in pain but was unable, a bear trap she realised. That action had put her off balance and she toppled to the ground with another pained gasp.

"Shit shit shit… That hurt." She pulled at the jaws of the trap, trying to extricate her foot but the device was stuck fast.

"Harry? Harry!" She stopped calling abruptly when a wolf howled, it was _very_ close. She tried to pry the trap open again but couldn't get any of the leverage needed.

The bushes rustled, a low growl oozed threateningly from the thick undergrowth. Lara scrambled to pick up her bow and quickly nocked an arrow on the string.

The ominous rumbling growls now seemed to surround her on all sides. Lara pulled back on the bow and her head tracked back and forth trying to locate the source of the sound.

"Harry!" she screamed. At that moment a huge ball of grey fur and, more importantly, teeth flew through the air from the bushes.

Time seemed to slow. Lara felt like she was aware of everything. The pain in her ankle, the continued rustling of the brush, the drops of water on the wolf's fur, the strands of saliva stretched between the white teeth of its maw.

As if watching her own actions from afar she saw herself raise and draw the bow, even as the wolf flew through the air. She felt like a spectator as she lined up the shot, slowly, as if she had all the time in the world. She looked on as the arrow was released.

It flew true and struck the airborne wolf in the roof of its mouth. The huge beast immediately went limp, though the body kept coming. Time sped back up to normal and Lara was flattened by the heavy ball of flesh and fur.

She was acutely aware that the growling from the bushes had not stopped. She tried frantically to extricate herself from beneath the heavy canine. She could barely shift the beast. The threatening snarling was closer now. She could hear the wolf as it moved through the undergrowth. Summoning up strength she didn't know she had she managed to force the wolf off her just enough to reach another arrow for her bow.

Before she could nock it, though, the animal burst from the thicket surrounding her. Time once more seemed to slow for Lara, though this time her movements felt sluggish. She tried to pull the arrow back on the string, but it wasn't happening fast enough. This time the wolf would get her. It was even larger and more ferocious looking than the last, she thought absently. She grasped the arrow in her hand, ready to fight to the last.

"_Depulso!"_

A bright white light flew over Lara's head, striking the still airborne wolf in its centre. The beast thrown back violently, as if swatted by the hand of a giant. It hit a large tree behind it with enough force that Lara heard bones break.

"Lara, are you ok?" Harry dropped to his knees at her side, a flick of his wand throwing the second wolf off her completely.

"Harry! Thank God." Lara was almost crying in relief. "My foot, I stepped in a trap and then the wolves…" She was rambling, her heart still beating a million miles a minute.

"It's OK, Lara." Harry cut her off, his voice calming. "You're OK now. Let's get you out of this trap and I'll have a look at your foot."

Harry immediately started heaving on the trap with all his strength. Lara didn't think he'd be able to do all that much more than herself but somehow he managed to find the strength needed to pull the trap apart with his bare hands and Lara was able to wrench her foot free. She immediately threw herself at her saviour, grasping him hard.

"Thank you! Oh God. Thank you!" she repeated over and over again, her heart still hammering in her chest.

Harry let her hold him, all the while he whispered soothing words and rubbed her back.

Slowly Lara was able to calm down, the adrenaline gradually leaching from her system. She pulled away from Harry and tried to pull herself to his feet with his help. When she did she saw something that caused her heart to swell.

"Reyes! Jonah! Over here!" She shouted in excitement. Many of the crew members were in their group. She could see Alex, Grim and Whitman in addition to Reyes and Jonah.

"Lara! We found you! Are you alright?" said the ships engineer, Joslin Reyes, an outspoken african american a little shorter than Lara. She glanced at Harry briefly as she spoke and Lara noticed that the dark-skinned american was still grasping the pistol she was carrying.

"I'm OK, Harry here helped me. Are you all OK? Have you seen Sam?" Lara hadn't forgotten that Sam was the entire reason they had come here.

It was Jonah that spoke, "Is she not here, with you? This was where she said to meet," he said, concern lacing his voice. Over the course of their voyage Jonah Maiava had become very protective of both Sam and Lara. The burly maori man was the ship's cook and general muscle man and had treated them both as little sisters and had always been a good friend during any drama that had unfolded in the close atmosphere of the ship.

"She was, but by the time we got here she'd already gone," said Lara with worry. "She left her journal, it said she met a man called 'Mathias'."

The young team technician, the bespectacled Alex Weiss pushed forward to answer. "She said she'd met him, yeah," he said enthusiastically, "said he was a schoolteacher I think. He fixed up her foot."

Harry stepped forward. "Well I'd say she'd been gone for at least an hour, by the time we got here."

Angus 'Grim' Grimaldi, an old friend of Lara's father and the helmsman of the Endurance spoke up this time, the cantankerous scotsman's burr dripped suspicion as he asked, "and who are _you_?"

The wizard was unmoved by the aggressive showing, though he noticed that the other crewmembers had also moved around Lara protectively. "I'm Harry Potter." He smiled his best smile and gestured grandly. "Adventurer and trouble-magnet extraordinaire!"

Reyes raised a single eyebrow. "Isn't it 'trouble-maker'?" she asked cautiously.

Harry thought about it for a moment, and even went so far as to tap his finger on his chin as if in deep thought. "Nope," he said eventually, "definitely trouble-magnet." He jabbed a finger towards Lara. "She found _me. _All the trouble is her fault."

Lara couldn't help herself, momentarily she was able to forget their situation and the missing Sam. She laughed happily at the cheerful attitude of her new friend. Everything seemed just a little less gloomy with his constant light-hearted attitude.

Her laugh also broke through the heavy atmosphere between the crew and Harry.

"Little bird does have a nose for trouble," said Jonah, his deep voice rumbling with repressed laughter. "Remember that ninja she managed to annoy in Osaka? I didn't think they still existed!"

Grim, true to his name, didn't even crack a smile. "You girls shudnae go wanderin off. Now we need tae find Sam."

First the first time in the conversation, Whitman finally made his presence known. "Uhhh. Wait wait wait. What about Roth?"

Reyes, who seemed to have taken command of the remaining crew thought for a moment. "We should split up." Lara heard a quiet snort from Harry. "Someone should go with Lara and Harry to find Roth. The rest of us will fan out and look for Sam."

Lara rolled her eyes. It was obvious Reyes still didn't trust Harry, hence why someone else was going with them. "It's ok I-"

She was cut off by Whitman who jumped in quickly, cutting across Alex in the process. "I'll go with Lara."

"You know how to use this?" Reyes asked as she handed Whitman a pistol.

"I, uh, yeah. It's been a while, but it's all coming back." he said haltingly.

Seemingly ignoring the man's useless bluster Reyes just nodded. "Right, you guys, lets go find Sam." She immediately headed off into the undergrowth, Jonah and Grim right behind her.

Alex paused for a moment, he grasped her shoulder and didn't quite look into her eyes for some reason. "Don't worry, we'll find her." Before he quickly broke the contact and went off after Reyes.

The whole exchange had taken less than five minutes. Lara felt distinctly unwanted. She felt Harry's hand on her shoulder.

"You want me to take a look at that foot now?" he asked softly.

She tried putting her weight on it and hissed in pain. She'd probably twisted it when she'd fallen. Harry helped her back to the ground and looked around for Whitman.

"You, uhhh, what's your name?" he asked, realising he hadn't actually been introduced to the crew. Lara had told him the names of a few, but hadn't realised he wouldn't know them by sight.

Whitman jumped at being addressed. "Whitman. uh. Dr. James Whitman. Chief archaeologist for my expedition."

Harry nodded amiably, despite having to put up with a couple of hours of Lara complaining about the entitled arse. "Alright, Doctor. Can you scout ahead a bit while I take a look at Lara's ankle. It won't take long."

As he spoke Harry caught Lara's eye and shook his head minutely while waggling his fingers. His funny little 'it's magic' gesture. She understood, he didn't want the other crew to know right now. She was aware that he'd broken laws to tell her about magic and it seemed he wasn't about to break them again unless forced like he had been with Lara.

"Uh, yeah. Uh. You're right. I'll just, um, do that." Whitman quickly moved off, holding the gun in front of him like he expected it to go off at any second.

When he was out of hearing range Harry turned back to Lara. "Doesn't seem _that_ pompous," he said with a smile, "believe me, I've seen pompous. That was just a bit pathetic really."

Lara snorted at the apt description. She had _no idea_ why Whitman would opt to be her 'protector'. He really wasn't much use for anything more than smiling at a camera and chatting up reporters and undergrads.

Harry pulled out his wand and waved it over her foot while Lara looked on in fascination. Seeing actual magic being done simply never got old. Even if it was anticlimactic. Harry whispered a single word and the pain in her ankle ceased. Even the beginnings of a dark bruise where the snare had clamped her disappeared.

"All better, Miss Croft." Harry spoke in clipped tones and looked at her over the top of his glasses. "I'd recommend a week of bed-rest and then a month of relaxation at home. Is that clear?"

Lara giggled at what was obviously an impression of an overprotective nurse. She'd been in enough falls in her youth to know the type.

"Thank you nurse Potter," she said with a cheeky grin, "but I think we should catch up to Whitman before he does something stupid."

Harry nodded and stood, holding out his hand to Lara. She grabbed it and stood up, testing her injured ankle. There was no pain at all. She hadn't really expected there to be, she had grown an extremely healthy respect for Harry's abilities over the last two days and was starting to wonder exactly what he _couldn't_ do.

They both started moving quickly through the undergrowth after Whitman. Lara had to give it to the man, they hadn't given him much of a head-start but he'd got a fair distance away from them. After twenty minutes of walking they still hadn't seen him. At a couple of instances Harry stopped them both and cast some kind of spell. He said that there were more wolves about and he was just making sure they didn't try to attack like the other ones had.

He explained that his magic was able to make creatures, even humans, ignore them completely. He had apparently set something like that up around their camp earlier that night. He wasn't concerned that the wolves would be a legitimate threat, but he also didn't want to have to kill them unnecessarily.

He reminded Lara of some of the bushmen she'd met when out with her father and Roth. Big, burly men who used all their considerable skills at hunting to avoid killing the animals. When Lara had asked, one of them had said it wasn't a fair fight. There was nothing to be proud of in killing some dumb beast when you could instead have ensured its continued survival.

Harry, on the other hand, just shrugged and said he didn't see the point of killing them when they couldn't even attempt to hurt him. Lara considered that to be much the same kind of thinking.

Finally they found Whitman. Much to Lara's shock the man had actually managed to set a fire and make a simple camp. She wasn't quite sure how he'd got past the wolves. Perhaps it was his miraculously still-present hair-gel driving them away.

The camp had been set up next to a huge gate. Lara thought it looked to be either late Heian or early Kamakura period. It was covered in the same graffiti Harry and her had seen in the abandoned 'house' in the bunker. While the structure of the gate was obviously an old Japanese gateway, the actual gate was sheet steel, and attached to a modern looking hand winching system.

Whitman was talking to himself excitedly as they both walked up. She found it somewhat amusing that he hadn't connected the female figure with Himiko yet, but she supposed this really wasn't even close to his area of expertise.

"The people who made this, they must have been survivors like us," he babbled excitedly. "Remarkable!"

"And crazy," said Lara, unimpressed. "And murderers."

Whitman completely ignored her, however, in favour of waving her over to one of the winching mechanisms attached to the heavy, anachronistic steel gate. She shot a glance at Harry, who was seemingly trying to climb into a large metal shipping chest. She was obviously getting no sympathy from him, so she moved to the winch.

"Ready!" called Whitman.

"Wait! The handle's missing from this one, I've got no way to push it." She looked around as she spoke, surely the handle couldn't be far off.

"Ahh ha!" shouted Harry. "Here we go." He ambled up to Lara holding a length of metal pipe. "This should work."

He shoved the pipe into the vacant hole left by the old winching handle. "Ready, Doctor?"

"Hmm? Oh. Right," said Whitman who had returned to staring at the white graffiti. He moved back to his winching station and began pushing on Harry's signal.

Both of them were able to raise the gate quite easily, though it wouldn't stay up. Harry called to Lara and asked her to fetch some of the metal struts from the shipping container he'd been rummaging through earlier. Lara understood immediately what he wanted to do and could see the sense. There was no way back through once the gate shut. They'd be stuck.

She found some heavy pieces and propped them up on either side of the gate while Harry and Whitman held the gate open. Well, mainly Harry held the gate open. Whitman mostly complained.

When she was happy that the gate would stay open she waved to them both and they quickly followed her through. They both turned back to watch as the gate was stopped by Lara's carefully placed wedges. Harry smiled and nodded at Lara in acknowledgement.

By the time they turned around Whitman had already started up the stairs, still talking to himself all the way. Lara couldn't resist shaking her head.

"You do realise you do the same thing, right?" asked Harry while he smiled broadly. "That thing where you talk to yourself when you think you've found something interesting?"

"I do not!" protested Lara immediately. She thought about it a moment before shrugging sheepishly. "Not all the time, anyway."

Harry just smiled at her again and started up the stairs behind Whitman. Lara followed behind. The stairs led up a narrow and shallow gully. The sheer rock sides were, in places, inscribed with the figure that Lara believed to be Himiko again. It was strange that the Sun Queen was so universally represented in the art of the island. Earlier she and Harry had come across a ruined statue of her and here where huge murals in her honour. The murals themselves must date to at least a few hundred years after her reign, normally a Queen would not be so long remembered. It was almost as if they'd _had_ no other rulers. Not even a reference to another king or queen was to be found anywhere on the carvings.

Just as she was about to voice her thoughts to Harry, while thinking smugly that she hadn't been speaking out loud, they both heard shouting from ahead. They shared a look and broke into a run.

They both burst into a small clearing a few moments later and Lara tried to assess the situation. Whitman was up ahead, standing in front of a large rough-looking man. The man was telling Whitman to lay down his gun. She noticed that the unknown man was well armed, with both a pistol and a bow. He was also accompanied by two more men, both of whom were similarly well armed.

"No, Whitman!" she called out. "Don't trust them!"

Harry put a calming hand on her shoulder. "Calm down, Lara." His voice level and controlled. He lowered his voice further. "There's more of them around up on the cliff. We can't fight them safely, just go with it for now."

Lara turned to him in shock. "You can't-" She saw the look in his eyes, it was hard, but at the same time she could see something else as he looked at her, protectiveness perhaps? It was just enough to calm her down, whatever it was. She nodded.

"OK, we'll come quietly," spoke Harry.

Almost immediately they were both grabbed from behind and shoved roughly forward. Lara felt rough hands trail over her shoulders before removing the bow she was carrying. The man flicked her hair and said something in a language she didn't recognise. Russian, she thought.

"Hey, watch your hands," Harry growled, Lara felt gratitude well up as the man turned his attention to Harry.

"What do you think you can do about it, little man?" His voice was rough and cruel, his russian accent adding to the harshness of his words. He stalked up to Harry and punched him in the stomach with enough force to make Harry double over gasping for breath.

"Harry, no!" whimpered Lara. Somehow Harry managed to straighten up and flashed her a grin before he winked. Lara wondered just how much the man had seen if he was able to take something like this in his stride. A tiny part of her wondered if he knew these people, the pushed that away quickly.

They were both pushed forward again. Up ahead, Lara could smell smoke.

The scavengers had rounded up three more of the Endurance's crew, though Lara only knew their first names. Behind them there was a steep terraced hill covered in old traditional Japanese houses. Most of them were burning. Harry and Whitman were pushed over to the other three men and forced to their knees with vicious kicks. The man from before, she thought his name was Vladimir, kept hold of Lara, instead pushing her up against a tree. His hand roughly trailed down her cheek to her chin.

"Ahhh, such a pretty thing," he mused as he caressed her shoulder. Lara tried to push him off but he slammed her back up against the tree forcefully. "Your little boyfriend is going to die," he whispered callously in her ear, "but don't worry. I'll show show you what a real man can do." He leaned in towards Lara as she struggled desperately.

"_Flipendo!"_

Once again Lara was saved by a flash of light and Harry's much welcome voice. The surprised Russian was thrown to the side with a cry of surprise. Lara looked up and could see Harry was standing, his hand holding his wand extended.

The other men gaped at him for a moment, a moment which gave Harry the opportunity to take two more down with flashes of red light. Quickly, though, the tough-looking and heavily armed men started firing at the attacking wizard. In moments Harry had taken down at least four of the rough-and-ready militia men. Lara hadn't been able to get a count, but she was sure there were at least a dozen. Most were now focussed on Harry.

Harry's magic was easily the equal of the men trying to fight him. Around him was a shimmering bubble that turned away everything the men fired at it. Through the shield Harry continued throwing bright blue and red lights.

In the chaos the other prisoners made a run for it, most running up the hill into the burning town. Lara turned back to Harry, determined to find something to help him. She looked around frantically for a weapon, but just caught sight of Vladimir as he tackled her to the ground. He hit her forcefully about the head with the butt of his pistol.

Dazed, Lara scratched ineffectually at him and tried to force him off her, her struggles were in vain. The man gripped her hair painfully and pulled her to her feet. It felt like he was going to rip her scalp off. He held Lara in front of him as a human shield, his gun resting on her temple.

"Little man!" Vladimir's voice shouted from right next to Lara's ear.

Harry turned immediately at being addressed. All around Lara could see the prone bodies of the men Harry had hit with his magic. Of the more than a dozen men at the start all but three had been laid low. His eyes widened when he saw Lara. Before he could react properly, the Russian spoke again.

"Ahh! If I see that little stick of yours move one _diuym_, I'll have to spread the girl's pretty little face all over the ground." Lara tried to shy away as she felt his warm breath in her ear as he spoke.

She could see the indecision in Harry's eyes as he dropped the tip of his wand just slightly and his shield flickered and fell. Lara knew he would be trying to come up with a new plan. Unfortunately, the remaining Russians didn't give him more than the barest few seconds. Lara saw one of them move up behind the wizard, swinging a huge mace-like polearm made of rusted flotsam.

"Harry!" she screamed, but too late. The ugly metal lump struck Harry on the side of the head, throwing him meters to the side and to the ground, the force of the blow more than enough to cave-in a skull. "Harry! NO!"

Lara shook herself free of the loosened grip of Vladimir and sprinted across the narrow patch of ground between her and the fallen wizard. She collapsed to the ground as she reached his body. Behind her she could hear Vladimir shouting at the remaining men, she couldn't recognise the words. She paid him no heed. All her attention was focussed on Harry.

He was crumpled bonelessly in a heap, arms and legs in disarray. The side of his head was already covered in blood that dripped down across his face. Lara tried to straighten his body out, unaware that most of the remaining Russians had moved off into the burning village in search of the other runaway crew members.

"Harry, don't do this. You can't die. You'll be OK." She whispered to him as she cradled his head in her lap. As she did so she noticed something that made her breath hitch. His skull wasn't crumpled as it should have been. She looked closer.

He was breathing. She let out a joyful laugh and hugged his head to her for a moment, thanking any deity that would listen. She realised that she didn't want the Russian gang to know he'd survived and looked around in momentary panic. There was only one near her, and he was looking the wrong way.

Moving quickly she dragged Harry behind the cover of a low and almost completely destroyed wall, grateful for the noise of the large fires for drowning out the sound of her movements.

She had to get Harry away from here, but there was no way she'd be able to pull him all the way through the village without being noticed. She looked back towards the way they had come, suddenly remembering that they had wedged the gate open. If she could get him back there and to Whitman's camp on the other side they might just be OK.

She waited for the man nearby to look the other way and started, painfully slowly, to drag Harry back towards the steps they had climbed just twenty minutes ago.

There was no way she could just drag Harry down the steps, she'd have to carry him. She thought she might be able to manage, he probably weighed only slightly more than she did. She knew that she'd have to be careful though, once stumble and she might drop Harry, that could quite possibly kill him.

Just as she bent to pick him up she was grabbed suddenly from behind, spun around and thrown against the harsh rock walls of the gorge. Vladimir had come back, he'd found her.

He was shouting at her in rapid and angry Russian, she had no idea what he was saying, but he was pacing slowly towards her. She could see the crazed light in his eyes and knew he wanted her dead. She wouldn't let that happen. He moved closer, pressing himself against her. His face was just inches from her own, his warm putrid breath rolling over her nose.

In desperation Lara burst forward, headbutting him with all her strength. It was enough, he fell backwards to the ground clutching his face. Lara's vision went blurry from the force of the blow, but she knew the man still had his gun and she lunged at him, trying to wrestle the weapon from his grasp.

The powerful Russian was much stronger than she was and he gradually managed to force the gun towards her. She raised her knee to his groin with all the force she could muster causing him to howl in pain and throw her off. The gun was thrown aside too. Lara scrambled madly across the ground the pick it up.

She reached it, and spun around to aim it at Vladimir. Too slow, the was already on top of her. Once again they fought over the gun, this time, though Lara somehow found the strength to push the gun towards her assailant. Suddenly, in their struggle the gun went off.

The bullet hit Vladimir just above his brow and blew part of his forehead off completely, coating Lara in blood and gore. Somehow the man stayed alive for another couple of moments until his final rattling breath signalled his demise.

Lara, who'd been laying still with the gun still trained on the now deceased Russian started taking in deep hitching breaths. She'd killed him. He was dead and she'd killed him. She climbed unsteadily to her feet

She tried to clamp down on the panic that she was feeling. She couldn't do this alone. She needed Roth, Harry, her father. Anyone, she wasn't strong enough to do this. She knew she couldn't.

She looked back at Harry's prone body and knew that she had to try. She strengthened her resolve with everything she had and went to Vladimir's corpse. She relieved him of her bow and was able to find another magazine for the pistol he'd been carrying. As it only had two more bullets left, that was a godsend.

Next she went to Harry, and through a supreme effort managed to get him over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. Slowly, deliberately, step by step, the began her descent.

It took another 10 minutes to make it to the gate and as she did she heard just the sound she had been dreading. Running footsteps. She hoped for a moment that they might be survivors from the Endurance, the crew or Whitman. The shouted Russian snuffed that hope out before it could even be fully born.

She set Harry down as gently as she could behind one of the low stone dykes that ran on either side of the staircase before she too took cover.

There were two men, both armed with bows. She couldn't understand what they were saying, but she could guess. They must have found Vladimir's body at the top of the stairs and started in pursuit. She peaked out from behind her wall and was seen almost immediately. One of the men pointed at her and shouted, he loosed the arrow he'd had held in his bow straight at her. Lara managed to shift just enough that the arrow only cut the skin of her cheek and brought her stolen pistol to bear on the two men.

It was again as if she was moving in slow motion as she lined up her first shot, the bullet hit the man through his right eye causing him to drop like a doll with its strings cut. Even before the first man could nock another arrow she was moving her gun to target him, moments later the gun fired again and the second Russian fell to the ground, dead.

Throughout it all, Lara had barely given the actions a single thought. Still in a daze Lara moved quickly to pull Harry the last few meters through the gate to safety, kicking away her supports once they were both through.

She dragged Harry to the still healthy fire and collapsed next to him in exhaustion.

She joined him in blissful oblivion moments later.

* * *

**A/N: **So, Yeah. Woops.


	5. Race Against Time

**A/N**: Ownership stuff. Not mine.

* * *

Harry Potter awoke slowly, a peculiar mixture of wet and warm. And sore. He had one absolute stonker of a headache.

He was no stranger to headaches.

This one rated eye-watering throb with extra hypodermic needles. Not exactly a Voldemort-level headache but still pretty respectable in its own right. If he was to make a judgement he'd put it just a little below Nundu-breath induced encephalitis.

At the moment he couldn't remember exactly what he'd done to deserve this headache. There was generally a good reason for these things. Usually that reason was 'continuing to be alive', but given how universally accepted it was as a reason for giving Harry headaches he'd come to accept it as a fact of life.

Over the last few years Harry had found many new and exciting ways of getting headaches. His long honed familiarity with personal injury informed him that this wasn't one of those times. This time it was almost certainly a blunt instrument of some kind.

He tried to remember what exactly he'd been doing.

He remembered Lara, so that was a good start.

Slowly the trials of the past few hours floated back into his consciousness. He couldn't restrain the mental grimace at his performance.

He'd been taken down by a bunch of muggles. Harry had a healthy respect for muggles and their capabilities, but he knew that any halfway sensible wizard should be able to beat off any number of muggles with ease.

And had he really been so obvious with his magic? He groaned softly. He could have transfigured some wolves or something to be a distraction, instead he jumped in head-first and started shouting curses. Hell, even animating the trees to attack the Russians would have been a better option.

He'd lost his cool a bit, he knew. He really didn't respond well to that big guy getting physical with Lara. He'd acted like some fresh-out-of-Hogwarts rookie. He should have thought it through more from the start, at least he'd made the right decision surrendering at the beginning. There was no way he'd be able to protect Lara and Whitman with that many weapons around them and by giving up without a fight they weren't bound. It had been much easier to get the drop on them when neither of them had been tied up.

Given what he could remember he was rather surprised to be alive to have a headache. He was alive, and strangely comfortable. He didn't think the Russians looked like the kind of people to keep their prisoners warm. Even if he was being soaked. He now realised that it was rain he could feel, heavy rain.

He cracked his eyes open and was greeted with the welcome sight of an uninjured Lara trying to stoke a camp-fire back into life. It was still dark, though Harry was unsure if that was because it was still night or due to the heavy storm clouds roiling overhead.

"Well that went well," he croaked as he gingerly pushed himself into a sitting position.

She spun around and Harry could see that her face was puffy and her eyes red from crying. "Harry!" she cried happily, "thank God you're alive!" She jumped over to him and gave him a gentle and careful hug. She pulled back and looked him over. "How's your head?"

Harry chuckled and shrugged non-committally. "I've felt better," he said, "I've also felt much worse. I'll survive."

A broad smile spread across Lara's features and she sniffled a bit. "I was so worried," she explained. "When I saw you get hit I was so sure that was it."

He nodded and put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry I worried you." he said softly before smiling. "But wizards are pretty hard to kill."

Before she could ask the question that was obviously on the tip of her tongue, 'How?', the radio on her hip crackled into life.

#Crakshsh# "-anyone receiving this? Lara, are you there?" The voice was strong, but strained.

Lara instantly went for the radio, fumbling a bit in her haste. "Roth! Yes, I'm here. What-"

"Stop, Lara. Listen," interjected Roth's voice. Harry could hear the man's laboured breathing in the background. "I'm not doing so well here Lara. Where are you? Are you in the abandoned village?"

Lara nodded as she spoke. "We're near the village, there were men. They tried to-"

One again, Roth's voice cut across Lara as she spoke. "I'm sorry Lara, but I need your help." Harry could hear the man's voice getting noticeably weaker. "I've taken an injury. I'm on the mountainside above the village. Can you get here?"

Harry watched as Lara clutched the radio close and spoke rapidly. "I, Roth, I don't know. I don't know." Harry reached out and squeezed her shoulder supportively. Lara looked up at him and he nodded to her. "We can."

"I'm sorry Lara." Roth's voice came back. "I know you can do this." His voice was now very weak. "You're your father's daughter Lara." There was a clatter on the line and the signal went dead.

"Roth? Roth! Roth, are you there!" she shouted into the device.

Harry squeezed her shoulder again before speaking. "Come on Lara, he'll be OK. We need to get going_ now_ though."

She nodded and surged to her feet despite her obvious exhaustion. "Yes, of course. You're right." She immediately started walking quickly towards the huge fortified gate shrine they had already passed once that night.

As Harry followed he suddenly became aware that he didn't have his wand on him.

That was a concern. No, that was an absolute nightmare.

It was obvious to him now that this amazing and fascinating island was also home to more than one murderous psychopath. He'd been treating it as a camping holiday really. Oh sure, he'd known that he had to keep an eye out. He'd let his vigilance slip. Lara had been good company and interesting conversation, he'd allowed himself to forget just how it was that they'd met.

Well he wouldn't forget again. Once he found his wand he vowed that some Russians would be learning the meaning of fear.

He just needed his wand back. Hopefully he'd be able to find it at the place he'd been knocked out.

Working together they were able to open the gate again with little difficulty. This time, though, they didn't have enough time to wedge it open before they moved through. If this went tits-up then they'd have no way out. Harry did not intend for it to go tits-up.

The scene that greeted him on the other side of the gate was an unpleasant one. In a heap near the bottom of the stairs were two bodies, both being picked over by a small conspiracy of ravens. Harry was no stranger to death, but it was usually a bit tidier than this. He looked at Lara questioningly.

She wouldn't meet his eyes. Instead she alternated between staring at the bodies and at the ground. She whispered something Harry couldn't hear.

Harry finally noticed the pistol that Lara was now carrying and connected the dots in his mind.

"Never feel guilty about saving your own life Lara." She looked up, surprise painted across her features. "It was them or us, I'm just grateful you were with me."

"But I killed them. I just..." She didn't seem to know what to say. "I needed them out of the way. So I killed them. I didn't even try anything else."

Harry waited until she finally looked him in the eyes and smiled. "Do you think I'm going to castigate you? For saving my life?" he asked and shook his head. "You did what you felt you had to. No-one can do anything more."

"I'm just sorry I wasn't able to protect you from this." He looked away sadly.

"What do you mean?" she asked in some confusion.

He looked back up at her, a grim look in his eyes. "I'm no innocent Lara. It was a long time ago, but it never really leaves you." His eyes unfocused and he stared into space. "No matter how far you run."

Lara looked shocked at his admission, but the fact that she didn't immediately run was a hopeful beginning. "You?" she started. "You've killed people?"

Harry nodded shortly. "I have. It was me or them, but that doesn't change the facts." He moved closer to Lara and held both her shoulders while he looked into her weary brown eyes. "Never forget what it feels like Lara. This feeling, the guilt. It's what reminds me that I'm still human. It's what makes you, me, different from them."

She held his gaze for a long moment before nodding subtly. He released her shoulders and they both moved past the bodies up the long and winding steps.

They soon returned to the area where Harry had been knocked unconscious. Now that he was nearby, Harry knew he could use his extremely limited wandless capabilities to retrieve the wand. Hopefully it was still here, if one of the thugs had taken it Harry had no idea what he'd do.

He focused on the wand and willed it to return to his hand. Being able to summon your own wand was an important skill for any combat wizard. It had been years since Harry had needed to do it. Years since he'd been in any kind of real fight.

Harry sighed in relief when the nearly foot-long piece of wood that represented a part of the core of Harry's very being flew from the undergrowth and slapped into his hand. The wand was warm in his fingers, as if it was welcoming him back. It was a good feeling.

"If you could just magic it back to you, why did we have to come back here again?" asked Lara wryly.

Harry turned his wand over in his hands, inspecting it for any injury, any scratch out of place. As he did so he answered. "Magic does have _some _limitations Lara. To summon something you need to either know where it is or be pretty close-by," he explained. "A wand is a bit different, it's easier to summon thanks to the link between wand and wizard, but I still couldn't have reached it from the camp."

Lara accepted this new tidbit of information on the limitations of magic without much fanfare. Harry supposed she didn't really have much option but to take his word for it.

They quickly moved passed the fallen bodies of their fellow captives. The thugs didn't take kindly to attempted escape, it would seem. Most of the captives had been rounded up and shot in the back of the head. Neither Harry nor Lara wanted to look too closely. It was unlikely that they'd had an easy end. Both knew there was nothing that could be done for them now, and Roth needed them to hurry.

They moved through the village as quietly as they could manage, their movements muffled and silenced completely by the now torrential rain. Lara's focus on getting to Roth meant that she cast barely a glance at the treasure trove of historical artifacts surely held within the staggeringly well preserved village.

The village was built right onto the side of the mountain and eventually they reached a cliff face. Above them the village continued into the dark and turgid clouds. Through the storm Harry could hear shouting and then, as he watched, a bright orange light bloomed in the dank gloom of the mountainside. They'd set the village alight.

In moments the glow of the fire spread across much of the face above them and glowing motes of ash started to drift around them. The heavy rain continued unabated and Harry couldn't help but wonder how the fire had caught so easily in the heavy rainstorm.

"What, what have they _done?" _exclaimed Lara. "This village is _centuries_ old and they've just set it alight like it was _nothing!"_

Harry thought there was a more pressing concern. "Never mind that, we need to get up there before the whole mountainside goes up. I don't think Roth had that much time."

Lara's breath hitched and Harry could almost hear her self-recriminations. "Shit. I'm so… Roth, we need to get to him. Can you climb?"

Harry just shot her a flat look.

"Right. Wizard," she said after a moment. "Can you fly?"

Harry felt that question was worth another similar look but restrained himself. "Not without assistance. But I can make the climb a lot easier."

He pulled his wand out with a flourish and quickly transfigured one of the many vines already covering the cliff into a solid-looking ladder. He had done some rock-climbing in the past, but in the conditions he really wasn't all that enthusiastic about it.

Lara shook her head and smiled. "That'll work I suppose."

Harry opted to climb first, it was obvious that the thugs were still somewhere nearby and he didn't want Lara endangered. He wasn't _totally_ sure, but he was fairly confident that even a gunshot wound would be pretty survivable. Not that he planned to get shot.

The top of the cliff was clear and he gestured for Lara to climb up and join him. The village up here was much the same as the area they'd already moved through. Old traditional style Japanese buildings that were old yet almost perfectly preserved. Up here, though, many of them were burning furiously.

As he looked around Harry occasionally caught a glimpse of silhouettes moving across the brightly flickering conflagrations. He looked back at Lara and caught her eye.

"Don't even think about it," she said resolutely. "We're in this together. I'm coming with you."

His mouth snapped shut. He knew that tone of voice all too well.

"Ok," he allowed. "I think the best way through is probably the burning buildings. We won't run into any of those Russians that way."

She blinked, either not expecting his easy acceptance, or brought up short by the idea of walking through burning buildings being _the easy way._ He wasn't sure.

"Magic, I assume?" she asked him with a half-smile.

He grinned back. "Of course! Flame Freezing Charm," he explained as he cast the charm on both of them. "Walking through fire takes some getting used to but it's actually a little ticklish."

He cast another spell, _Homenum Revelio_, to ensure the coast was clear before quickly leading Lara into one of the larger burning buildings. His plan was simple. If we could keep a towering inferno between them and the thugs they should be able to get clear without ever being revealed.

Not for the first time he cursed the fact that his concealment spells didn't work here. Disillusionment and a Silencing Charm could have avoided so much trouble.

His plan worked even better than hoped. They barely caught a glimpse of the small army that was scouring the burning village. Lara was even able to save a few items that she felt simply _couldn't_ be left to burn with the rest. Harry didn't quite understand their importance, but Lara was more than happy to fill him in on the details as they moved closer to the upper valley.

Eventually, though, they had to leave the safety of the flaming buildings. Before them was another sheer cliff though for some reason it was guarded by two of the heavily armed Russians.

"Perhaps there's another way up? I can't imagine the locals climb up all these cliffs all the time," he whispered to Lara.

She shook her head. "Actually the locals probably used cliff paths, I saw the remains of one further down the mountain," she explained quietly. "I think they're impassable now, it looks like there another man at the top of the cliff. Perhaps a retractable ladder?"

Harry peered up into the gloom at the top of the cliff. If there was another man up there he couldn't see him. But he trusted Lara in this; her eyesight was uncannily good and his was uncannily bad.

"Ok, so we need to get up there then?" he asked.

She nodded. "It's the fastest way to Roth."

Harry immediately started formulating a plan. Ideally he wanted to avoid killing the two men. Not because he felt they deserved to live, after what had happened before he'd been knocked out he knew he would shed no tears over their deaths. No, he simply wanted to protect Lara from more death.

He gestured for Lara to stay hidden and started to creep forward slowly. The problem with magic was it was almost singularly ill suited to stealth. Oh sure there were silencing charms and disillusionment charms and other similar spells. When you actually reached your target, however, you were reduced to using balls of brightly coloured light to incapacitate your opponents. Fortunately he was not entirely without options.

_Petrificus Totalus _was quiet, barely visible and, as a school-yard spell, extremely easy to pull off quickly and silently.

The two men went rigid almost simultaneously as Harry jabbed his wand at them. Both fell silently to the ground.

As Harry turned to beckon Lara to follow it all went wrong. A voice shouted from above, the man Lara had seen and he heard Lara shout a warning. Immediately a pale shield shimmered into existence around Harry, just in time to turn aside a torrent of bullets fired from on high.

Harry cursed the man's obviously good vision. He'd felt it unlikely that the man would be able to see what was going on at the base of the cliff and he'd been even more confident that the man would probably be looking elsewhere anyway. Wrong again, he cursed himself.

He sighted up towards the cliff-top, trying to catch sight of the man. It wasn't that far, he should be able to see him easily. Obviously the man was well camouflaged. What he _could_ see, however, was the flashes of flame as the gun the man carried snarled and spat.

Before he could do anything, though, he heard a thunk from behind and the gunfire abruptly ceased. Moments later the body of a man well from the cliff-top with a sickening crunch, the fletching of an arrow visible protruding from his neck. The fall had not been at all kind, limbs were splayed in all directions and very obviously broken. It was an unpleasant sight.

He turned to Lara and found her staring at the body, bow arm still extended. He moved over to comfort her quickly, placing his body in her line of sight as she stared at the mangled corpse her actions had produced. The important thing was to keep the guilt from taking over.

"You did right, Lara." he said with conviction. "Looks like you saved me again." He chuckled. Not exactly true, but it would serve to lighten the mood. He surreptitiously waved his wand at the body, transfiguring it into an unremarkable stone. He hoped that getting the immediate evidence out of her sight would help.

She seemed to come to herself and look up at him. He could see the guilt brimming in her dark brown eyes, but deeper than that he could see the resolve. She was strong.

She breathed out. "I know," she said, her voice slowly gaining strength. "It's just… seeing the results like that is a bit of a stark reminder."

"We'll get through this Lara. Together." He briefly squeezed her tightly in his arms and released her.

She straightened up, rubbing her eyes to clear them. "We need to find a way up." She looked about for some route. "Roth's up there."

Harry surveyed the cliff for the simplest way up, it was covered in vines and other growths. That would probably be the best plan. He gestured in the air with his wand silently and a few of the vines swiftly changed shape into a simple rope ladder.

Lara nodded at him and, after a quick test of the load-bearing capabilities of Harry's newest construction, began the long climb to the cliff-top.

For safety, Harry waited at the bottom of the cliff, watching Lara's swaying form as she quickly clambered her way up the rather difficult ladder. He was frustrated with his continued inability to keep the poor girl away from the unpleasant business of survival, but he was constantly being impressed by her strength and moral fortitude. Maybe, just maybe, she didn't need such careful protection. He suspected that she was probably too stubborn to die.

A bit like him really.

Her voice called down from high above. "OK, Harry! I'm up. It looks clear and the ladder held fine."

He smiled. "Did you expect anything less!" He called. "On my way up now."

When Harry reached the top of the cliff he found that they were still in the village, though fortunately this part was not burning. A quick revelio spell confirmed that they were alone up here.

"Yep, it's clear. Looks like we're alone up here. I suppose we keep following the path up?" he asked.

Lara nodded her agreement. "It can't be much further to reach Roth. We need to hurry," she said sounding worried. "He didn't sound good on the radio."

They both moved on and up. Harry could see the interest in Lara's eyes at the almost completely undamaged historical Japanese buildings. Harry tried to keep her talking about them, having her obsess over Roth would help no-one. A bit of a distraction wouldn't hurt. Despite this they both climbed quickly.

Soon they reached another cliff, this one much less overgrown. From the bottom they could see a shaft that seemed to cut into the mountain high up on the face. If they wanted to continue up, then that was the only way forward.

This time Harry conjured a long rope which he sent snaking up to the high cave to wrap around one of the support columns he could just make out. Once in position he then transfigured it into another rope ladder. He figured keeping it simple was for the best. If it worked before it would work again.

Once again Lara went first as the lighter of the two and Harry followed quickly after. As Harry began his climb he heard Lara's shout of alarm.

"Oh God, Harry! It's Roth! Hurry!"

He heard her run off into the mountainside and tried to climb quicker. He reached the top a minute later and looked around.

It was barely a cave, it seemed that the mountainside above the village was an almost knife-edge thin ridge with another valley on the far side. A small tunnel had been cut through to the next valley and Harry could see more buildings on the far side.

As he exited the short tunnel the scene that met his eyes was not a happy one.

Lara was fussing and panicking over the body of a man, Harry assumed he was Roth.

"Don't you dare die you northern bastard!" she babbled furiously.

At the man's feet was a very large wolf, dead. Most importantly, though, the man's legs looked like they'd been caught in a blender.

Harry rushed over to the body. Lara looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

"Please, Harry, save him," she pleaded. "He's still alive, please."

The man was indeed still alive, though quite how he'd managed that Harry had no idea he must have lost a _lot_ of blood. Harry knew he couldn't help the blood already lost, but he could do something about the continued bleeding. He set to work.

"Lara, in my backpack there's a first aid kit," he directed, "See if you can find some antibiotics while I clean this up. And pass me some bandages."

The legs were a mess, one was still bleeding, though heavy clotting had slowed the flow significantly. The wolf must have taken literal bites out of the man as chunks of flesh were missing. These injuries were far beyond Harry's ability to heal without potions, but he could make sure the man survived.

First he cleaned up the wounds and stymied the bleeding, wasn't sure what the effects would be if he tried to use flesh-knitting charms on his legs so he contented himself with some antibiotic ointment, charming the bandages sterile and wrapping both legs firmly. Normal healing would have to do for now.

The only other potential issue he could think of was potential dehydration. Harry wished he knew the spell for intravenous fluid injection but it was very rarely used, potions were far more reliable. They'd just have to hope that the man came round, they could give him a drink then.

He looked to Lara who was staring at her mentor with wide unblinking eyes. "He'll be OK Lara. Don't worry."

Her eyes shifted to Harry for a moment and shone with gratitude. No words needed to be said.

"I'll set up some protections here and get a fire going, we can take it in turns to watch him," he suggested. "I'll go first, you try and get some rest. I had my nap earlier. I'll be fine."

Lara looked for a moment like she was going to object, but Harry could see that she was utterly bone-weary. She nodded tiredly in acceptance. "OK, I'll try," she sighed. She held Harry's gaze for a long moment. "Thanks Harry. Just… Thanks."

Harry nodded to her and set about his tasks.

* * *

**A/N**: And that's all I have to say about that. On an unrelated note have I mentioned how much I hate quick-time events?

I actually wrote this some time ago and it's been sitting about waiting for me to get off my arse and write the next chapter (I was trying to stay at least one chapter ahead of what I was posting to give me plenty of time for corrections etc) but the Harry-Roth-Lara argument took me ages to work out.

I figure I'll address some of the points raised in reviews:

1) Harry's a bit of a moron. Yes. He is a bit. He's kinda the wizarding version of a student on a year-out. Obviously he's a bit more competent than that and he has a ton of experience but it's been some years since he had to deal with really unpleasant situations. Skills like that can go stale.

2) Why didn't Harry summon his stuff. Couple of potential reasons. The first is that the Summoning Charm is meant to assume you know where the item you're summoning is. 'Somewhere in the sea' isn't quite precise enough. (Molly's use to get prank items off the twins is much more targeted). The second is simply that some of the items weren't in his survival kit. He was on a magic carpet, not his broom and he's not carrying his entire life with him. His broom actually got destroyed during the Dragon incident. He has a new one but he now keeps it safely away from hijinks. His cloak is much too valuable to bring on an expedition like this, especially when disillusionment should work just as well. The fact that it doesn't is a point of note for Harry.

3) Why does Harry get beaten up. Ok so this ties into 1). But there's something else. Lara Croft in Tomb Raider is a punching bag. To retain some of the spirit of the game I gave Harry a bit of a punching. I have no intention for him to make such a stupid mistake again though I'm afraid he may still get caught flat footed. After all Yamatai has some weird shit going on.

I should also apologise for the fact that updates wont be coming thick and fast for this. It is not, however, abandoned.


	6. A Path Less Travelled

**A/N:** "What is that?" I hear you cry. Why yes, it's an update for the thing you probably thought was abandoned and had probably stopped caring about. Not so!

* * *

Lara watched Roth unblinkingly. Harry had woken her just a couple of hours ago to take her turn watching her injured mentor. She suspected that the selfless wizard had let her have much more sleep than she was supposed to get, it was almost dawn already and she'd actually felt well rested after her sleep. However long it was.

Her eyes shifted to the subject of her thoughts. Sleeping quietly on a comfy mattress and covered in the same gaudy duvet he always seemed to produce he looked completely out of place.

Of course that was because he was. He was insane. And mad. And utterly bizarre. People like him shouldn't exist. They only existed in movies or stupid fairy tales; the wizard hero riding in to save the girl.

She had no doubt that he _had_ saved her. Without Harry she very much doubted she would have survived the first 24 hours, let alone that gigantic fuck-up at the village. What had Whitman been thinking?

Whitman, she hadn't even thought about him. She didn't see his body when they went back to the village so she assumed he was still alive. It was a crime really, people like Whitman persist while the likes of Steph are killed like animals.

She was still trying to process the fact that she was a murderer. There was no getting around it, she couldn't shrug it off as nothing. There were four men fewer in the world today because she had decided that it should be so.

Where did she get the right to decide the fates of others? Should she have done something different? Perhaps some of them could have been talked down or even injured. That had to be better than dying, right? If only she'd been faster or smarter they wouldn't have had to die.

What was even more worrying was just how little guilt she really felt over killing them. She regretted becoming a murderer, but she did not regret their deaths. Harry had tried to talk her through the feelings the day before and perhaps he'd simply done too good a job. She accepted that they'd had to die. It was that simple, and it shouldn't be. No-one had the right to make that choice. Yet she knew that if attacked here and now she would not hesitate to kill anyone in defense of Roth and Harry. _She would_ make that choice, right or not.

She clung to the knowledge that Harry knew what she'd done and didn't immediately condemn her. He'd even tried to comfort her, said he'd killed people as well. Her brow furrowed. She found it hard to imagine Harry killing anyone. In her mind she'd already created this impossible superhero image for him, someone who would always find a way to defeat the bad guy without having to kill him. The world wasn't a story though. Some people could not be reasoned with. Some could not be turned aside. Some had to die not because their death was a good thing, but because their lives were so much worse.

It was a burden. She had seen that in Harry's eyes when he had told her. The guilt and doubt would always be with her, but in the moment those were luxuries she could not afford. Here and now she would do everything in her power to ensure that she and her friends, and Whitman, made it off this godforsaken island alive. She was strong enough. She had to be.

She realised that she was now staring unseeingly at Harry's relaxed face as he breathed softly in his sleep. He looked so much younger when he was asleep. Awake, under his cheerful façade, he projected an aura of calm and control, even in the direst of situations. It was a little like the feeling she'd felt from her father, the sure knowledge that they would move mountains for her if necessary. All children felt like that with their parents though, quite why she felt so close to him after such a short time she had no idea. She supposed that hardship would inevitably force people together, the mutual reliance and trust necessary had no other outcome.

As she continued to watch him she heard a throaty chuckle. "Should I be jealous?" It was Roth's voice.

She turned immediately to her mentor. "Roth! You're awake! Thank God, how are you feeling?"

Immediately she began fussing about him as he pushed himself upright.

"Get away with you girl, I'm not an invalid! Just a bit of a scratch is all. Bloody wolves." He winced slightly as he tried to shift his badly injured leg.

"A scratch!" squeaked Lara indignantly before glancing at Harry and lowering her voice. "You're missing whole _chunks_ of your legs. If it wasn't for Harry you'd have died!"

"Harry, eh? This is your friend then?" he asked with a somewhat dubious look at the ridiculous looking Harry. "Where did he find that blanket?"

"God alone knows," Lara sighed with a wry smile. "He keeps pulling it out every night. He seems to be attached to it."

Concern clouded her mentor's eyes. "Are you sure about him Lara?" he asked. "There are some bad types on this island."

"We've met them." Lara said firmly, she looked down, suddenly worried. "Roth. I. I killed some of them."

"That must have been hard." He reached over the grasp her shoulder.

Lara shook her head and let out a bitter laugh. "It's scary just how easy it was."

Roth grunted and went quiet for a while. Finally he said, "And what was Harry doing at the time?"

She looked at him, angry and hurt at his suggestion. "We protected each-other," she said firmly. "Without Harry I'd be dead and you'd be either dead or dying. Trust me, he's a friend."

They were both quiet for a minute as Roth contemplated her words. As he thought Lara looked back at Harry and wondered idly what he was dreaming about. He looked happy.

"Have you heard from Reyes and the others?" he finally asked.

She shook her head. "Not since we last talked. They were looking for Sam while we came to you with Whitman."

His eyes widened. "Sam's missing? We spoke just last night. She said she was safe and waiting for Reyes' group."

Lara nodded sadly. "She said she was with some man, Mathias. By the time we got there she was gone, she left some of her things. I'm worried Roth."

"As am I Lara, that girl's got a good head on her shoulders but she's never been into anything like this." He paused a moment before continuing. "We have to hope the others find her. We need to get an SOS out. I sent one from the ship before it went down, but the bloody wolves took the pack with our transmitter."

She looked away, understanding where this was going. He continued. "Look, Lara, we need that transmitter, we need to take it to the top of that tower to give us the best chance. And I'm not going to be climbing any time soon."

"You want me and Harry to do it?" she asked, already knowing the answer.

"It's our best shot at transmitting a strong signal in every direction," he said with confidence. "They're looking for us, we just need to tell them where."

"I wouldn't be so sure it's that simple." Her head whipped around to look at the now awake Harry. His expression was serious. "There's more going on here than a bad storm, we need to work out what that is before we go luring more people to this death-trap of an island."

He paused. "Hi, by the way. I'm Harry." He stood up and offered his hand to the still sitting Roth.

Roth didn't take it. "There's nothing more to it. We need to get off this rock as soon as possible. That means signalling for rescue."

Harry dropped his offered hand unshaken. "And I say there is. You honestly think _weather_ is to blame for the ship graveyard on the coast?"

"Please," Lara's mentor scoffed. "What else could it be? Some kind of curse?" He laughed humourlessly and looked at Lara. "After everything your father went through, you can't believe this Lara?"

Lara was conflicted. On the one hand Roth was her mentor, her uncle in all but blood and one of the people she trusted most in the world. On the other was Harry, she had seen what he could do, the things he knew and knew he had good reason for his concern.

She also gathered that Harry did not want Roth to know about magic, she wasn't quite sure why he'd elect to keep it secret from Roth when he told Lara herself without any obvious reluctance. Ultimately, however, it was his secret to tell and Lara would not betray his trust, even to Roth.

She looked at Harry, willing him to understand. "We have to try Harry, surely? We can't just sit here and become like the others we've seen."

"I wasn't suggesting we do nothing." He sighed. "We need to get to the bottom of this _before_ we start luring more poor souls to this god-forsaken place."

"Listen boy, I know Lara trusts you, but this is nonsense," Roth cut in forcefully. "We can't afford to waste time on fancies. There's nothing unnatural going on here."

Harry bristled visibly at that. He directed a fiery glare at Roth before waving his hands in annoyed dismissal and stalking off to the nearby cliff-top.

Lara shot Roth a look that was equal parts apologetic and remonstrative before quickly following Harry.

He had sat himself down on the cliff edge with his legs dangling precariously over the sheer drop. He swung them idly as he stared out over the vista, seemingly uncaring of the extreme drop into the valley below. Every now and then he'd pick up a small stone and toss it out into the clear mountain air. The view was breathtaking.

"Harry, I believe you. I do," Lara began, "but we can't convince Roth if you wont show him any proof."

The dark haired wizard just sighed sadly. "I know, it wasn't that. It was just something personal." He shifted uneasily. "I know I told you about my magic. Honestly, I'm not sure why but I trusted you. You trust Roth, I can see that. But I don't."

He looked back at her and motioned for her to sit. "There are wards, spells, on or around this island that I don't really understand. Some of the ones I can understand feel… heavy, like a lead weight around my neck. The magic is meant to keep us here Lara. No amount of calling for help will work if our rescuers are just as trapped as us once they get here."

He stared back out over the expansive vista. "I'm not completely stuck here Lara. I can still communicate with my friends in a limited way. But that won't help. Even if they did come then they'd be stuck here too." He lay back and stared at the sky, the clouds awash in orange, yellow and lilac as they turned overhead. "I'm not even as close to them as I was, and they don't deserve that. But if you send out that SOS the best thing that could happen is that no-one will hear it. If someone does hear it, if they try to help then the magic will strike them from the sky or sweep them from the sea."

"But how can I explain that without magic?" He fell silent.

"If magic is causing this then can you fix it?" she asked. She put aside the issue with his friends until later, there would be time.

"Probably." He paused. "Maybe. If I can't fix it I should be able to find a way around it. But I need to find the source."

"We," said Lara.

He finally looked at her again, his brows furrowing. "Pardon?"

"_We_ need to find the source. You said 'I'," she said.

Harry sat up straight again and shook his head. "Lara, I doubt you can help. You have friends, work on saving them. I'll manage. I always do." He smiled what he probably thought was a relaxed grin. Lara just saw the loneliness buried beneath.

"Good try there. But I'm not falling for it," she said determinedly. "Whatever I do here is pointless if you can't um… dispel the curse?" She saw a slight glimmer of amusement at her choice of words. "Besides, you wouldn't have got this far without me to drag your sorry arse out of the fire when you get in over your head. Face it, we're a team."

He chuckled quietly at that, apparently accepting that she had at least been useful to have along. As he did she noticed that his already bright green eyes would twinkle ever so slightly when he was amused. All too quickly he sobered again.

"You'd have to go against your friends, against Roth. At least for a little while. I can't ask that of you." He quieted again. "Friends are important."

Lara straightened her shoulders and looked him square in the eye. "That's why _we_ need to save them."

Harry sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "OK, OK. I'm not stupid enough to turn down help," he allowed. "But we still can't tell Roth about magic just so he'll stop arguing with us."

She couldn't help but frown. "I still don't see why we can't tell him about it?" she half asked. "You told me almost straight away."

"You pretty much worked out something was up as soon as you noticed how uninjured you were." He shrugged. "Also we were going to be exploring together and I'm completely pants without magic, if I was going to be any use you had to know. We're not going to be travelling with Roth, he can't come with us with that injury so there's no need for him to know beside his own stubbornness."

Lara wasn't quite sure she bought that explanation, but didn't want to push the issue as it obviously made Harry uncomfortable.

Harry continued, "Besides, if it turns out I can't trust him then I have to wipe his memory and that's something I avoid like the plague."

Now it made more sense, just how magic had been kept a secret. The thought that even her own memories could have been tampered with was severely disquieting. She could understand why Harry didn't like it. Memories were all that was left of her father, the thought that someone could simply make those go away was scary.

In Liberia native tribes held the belief that a man was not dead until he was forgotten, a sentiment that her father had taken to heart in his quest for notoriety. That Harry had the ability to remove that last anchor holding her father to the mortal plane was… no. Harry wouldn't do that.

"He wouldn't tell anyone," she said finally.

Harry turned and met her gaze, and she felt like she was under intense scrutiny as if her faith in Roth was being analysed at the microscopic level. Finally, he grunted.

"OK, I'll tell Roth. But no-one else."

She shifted uncomfortably. "What about Sam?"

The answer came much quicker this time, though it was much less satisfying. "We'll deal with that when we get there," he said. He stood up slowly, stretching his back as he did so.

"And thanks Lara. You're a sport." Then the serious air evaporated and a mischievous look entered his eyes. "Now, how much do you want to see your mentor gaping like a fish?"

She couldn't help the short surprised laugh that broke free at that mental image. "I'm not sure it's possible. I don't think his face can stretch that way."

Harry smiled at her confidently then walked back towards where Roth was doing a bad job of concealing his distrust.

"So Lara was kind enough to point out that trust is going to be rather important here," he said without preamble. "So I'm going to give you a little demonstration."

He deftly flicked his wand into his hand and wiggled it theatrically, a large haddock materialized out of thin air to land squarely on Roth's lap with a damp thwump.

"I'm a wizard. Magic is to blame for the storm. We need to deal with that first. Any questions?"

Lara could see that though he might protest Harry obviously enjoyed trying to find ludicrous ways of revealing magic whenever he had the opportunity. She couldn't help but laugh at the look on Roth's face has his jaw set and his eyes traversed from the fish to Harry and back again.

"Right," he said evenly.

That was it, that was the full extent of his reaction. Lara could see that he was going over everything that had happened with this new piece of information and trying to work out a new plan.

"Can you deal with the magic then?" he asked after a long pause.

Harry looked vaguely disappointed at the very understated reaction. Lara could have sworn he actually pouted for a moment, prompting a satisfied smile from her.

"Well I think the source is near the middle of the island," said Harry eventually. "Until I get a closer look I can't really say much more but I promised Lara I'd get her and her friends safely off this rock. I'll work something out."

"And what do we do while you run off to save the day?" asked Roth, frustrated with his injury.

"I'd suggest you meet up with the rest. Try and find Sam. Stay alive," said Harry. "You know, the usual."

"And I'm going with him," Lara interjected.

Roth looked only slightly surprised at her statement. "I always knew you were a Croft, Lara," he said with a proud smile. "You'll keep Merlin here on the straight and narrow." His experienced eyes spoke more to Lara. 'And keep an eye on him,' they said.

She nodded slightly at the older man. She might not agree with him that Harry was a potential threat but now wasn't the time to have that discussion.

Harry turned to Lara and said, "Now you and I will need to find a path into the island's interior."

"There's a lot of sheer cliffs up the path," Roth advised. "You could probably use this." He handed Lara a worn but still serviceable climbing axe. "I assume you have hokus pokus to get you up those cliffs?"

"Yeah," Harry said, "and I've never done any proper climbing before anyway so the axe wouldn't be that much use to me anyway."

Roth pointed to the other side of the valley where Lara could see a narrow cleft in the rocks. "I didn't get to look around much before those damn wolves turned me into their chew toy," he grumbled. "But there's a path there that goes further in, I didn't scout it out but it looks well trodden."

"Thanks," said Harry with a nod. "Is there anything else you need before we go?"

"I'll be fine lad," said Roth dismissively. "I'll find a branch to use as a walking stick to save my leg and be up and about in no time."

Almost before he'd finished speaking Harry's wand was out and a nearby twig became a set of crutches for the injured man. "No need," said Harry. "I'll manage that for you."

Lara smiled again as the medical crutches floated towards Roth and he shook his head in what she knew was probably frustration. Roth had never appreciated shortcuts and magic was certainly the biggest shortcut ever.

Nevertheless, he said nothing. He understood the danger of this place, pride had no place in a survival situation.

Harry walked off in the direction Roth had pointed while Lara hung back for a moment.

"He'll see us out of here Roth," she said firmly. "I know it."

Roth pushed himself slowly upright on the crutches as he tested them for strength, still not quite trusting Harry's magic. "I trust you Lara, you're a good judge of a man," he allowed. "Just don't let him rope you into something you can't handle."

Lara chuckled bitterly. "Look around us," she said with a shake of the head. "That's already happened."

"No, it hasn't." He fixed her with a proud stare.

She couldn't help but smile gratefully, his faith in her abilities seemed absolute and that was a hard-earned coin indeed. Before she turned to leave she enveloped her mentor in a hug.

"Watch it lass," he said and she could feel him smile. "Injured man here."

She pulled back. "See you soon, Roth."

"Get away with you, girl!" he said, a little embarrassed by the sentiment. "Harry'll be wondering where you've got to."

With that she turned and jogged after Harry. She soon caught up with him as he assessed a broad crevasse that separated them from the path Roth had pointed out.

"What do you think?" he called to her as she pulled up beside him.

The drop was a sheer one, as they all seemed to be on Yamatai. It was much too far to jump, the other side was at least ten meters distant. The only possibility was a torii, one of the many traditional Japanese gateways, that straddled the path on the far cliff.

"If we can get a rope over there and fastened to the gate we could crawl across?" she suggested after a moment.

Harry nodded his head. "Two ropes might be easier though, I'd rather not take my chances with the drop."

With that the first rope snaked across the opening from Harry's wand and was soon tied tightly around the torii. Lara watched, impressed as always to see magic make difficult tasks laughably simple. It took Harry just minutes to tie up two ropes spanning the gap and most of that time was spent attempting to knot the near end by hand.

"Couldn't you do that with magic too?" she'd asked as the knot came loose a third time and Harry swore quietly under his breath.

"Well, yeah. I could," he admitted without looking up at her. "But where's the fun in that?"

Lara stared at him for a long wasted moment. Harry didn't notice. "The fun," she said deliberately. "Is in not falling to our deaths."

"We wouldn't die," said Harry as he waved off her concerns absently. "It would just be an inconvenience."

Lara couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that but before she could respond Harry gave up on his pathetic knot attempts.

"Ah, screw it!" he cried as he shot a spell at the rope which now stayed firmly fixed to the pole despite his shoddy work. "That'll do it."

"What did the spell do?" she asked dubiously. The rope still looked like it would come loose at any moment.

"Sticking spell," Harry explained. "That's not going anywhere, believe me."

Not quite ready to take his word for it Lara yanked hard on the rope and found that he was telling the truth. It was fixed fast.

In a moment Harry had the other rope fixed and Lara elected to go first. It was a simple crossing really, especially with the two ropes. It took her less than a minute to make the crossing and Harry followed soon after her. As Harry crossed a wind whipped up which caused him to wobble precariously over the chasm but he had a truly uncanny sense of balance and was able to dampen the motion out after just a few shaky seconds.

He leapt back to the earth beside Lara with a little theatrical flourish. Lara couldn't help but smile at his attitude, there was no doubt that his personality alone had made her time on the island more comfortable.

The path lead down a narrow ravine with sheer sides hung with all manner of mosses and vines. Lara paid special attention to the ground as there were a few footprints visible in the mud, she tried to make out any that might be Sam but they all looked like their shoes were extremely old and worn or they were walking barefoot.

The path led them downwards and eventually a cave mouth lay upon their path. Harry lit his wand.

"Stay close, it looks pretty dark in here," he said as he swept the thin beam of light around the cavern.

Lara couldn't stifle her gasp. "Incredible!" she said as she saw the ruins his light was illuminating. "These must pre-date the Kofun period."

She moved to one of the walls and traced her hand over the symbols. "A pilgrimage. But to where?"

"I imagine we'll soon find out," said Harry seriously. The lack of a joke pulled Lara from her wonder.

"What's wrong?" she asked in concern.

"I'm not sure," he said as he shook his head. He glanced around the dark cavern uneasily. "Let's just keep moving, yeah?"

Lara accepted the non-answer as as much information as he would be able to give. She just hoped it wasn't anything too serious.

Soon they exited the ruins and made their way further up the pilgrimage path. All along the path on each side were more statues to Himiko, each with lit candles arrayed around them. Eventually they rounded a bend in the path and Lara once again at the sight that met them. A perfectly preserved late Kofun period temple building. It was huge. And almost all the detailing seemed to be intact despite the constant battering it must have been subject to from the weather. The cliff above had been hewn into huge statues of the Sun Queen. Each one stared blankly down the pilgrimage path Harry and Lara had just walked.

It was nestled on the far side of another chasm but this one was spanned by a wide, strong-looking bridge. A strong wind whipped down the narrow cleft and Lara wondered at how the wood had stood up to that treatment for so many years.

Harry put out his hand to stop her from walking on.

"Stop," he said quietly. He nodded to an opening in the cliff above the temple where flickering human shaped shadows played against the cliff wall. "Look, there's people here."

Lara kept her voice low as she responded, "What do we do? Try and find another way?"

"I'm not sure there is one," he said as he shook his head. "I think this is like a garrison. Probably one of the only ways into the middle of the island."

"So what do we do then?" she asked. She thought he was probably right.

"Well, I can knock them out…" he trailed off. He clearly didn't think that was a workable solution.

"But?" she prompted after he was silent for a moment.

"But that would leave some very angry psychos behind us," he said with a dark look in his eyes. "Between us and your friends."

"They might not be the same group," Lara offered hopefully.

"True, but if we try and talk to them we've got no way of doing this stealthily." He looked at her sympathetically.

"We can't just attack them without knowing if they'll do the same to us," she argued. "That would make us no better than those men at the village."

Harry clenched his jaw but nodded firmly once. "OK. But I'm the only one who goes up to talk to them."

Lara opened her mouth to protest but he held up a hand to forestall her. "No, I can keep myself protected from gunfire. It's easier with just one."

An annoyed growl escaped her throat. "And what? I just watch?"

"You're the cavalry," Harry said with a cheeky grin. "If… When I make a stupid mistake you can ride in to pick up the pieces."

She gave him a skeptical look. "I'm not a child, Harry," she pointed out. "I'm also not stupid."

"All right, all right. But you have to admit it's logical not to put all our eggs in one basket," he said reasonably.

"I know," she said, her voice low. "But I still don't like it."

"Hey, relax," he said with a smile. "What could _possibly_ go wrong?"

"If we get attacked by an army of zombies I'm blaming you," she said wryly. She paused. "Do zombies exist?"

"Yup." Harry rose back from where they'd been crouching and walked out towards the temple as he swished his wand over himself before concealing it in one of his many pockets. Lara had to content herself with watching from afar.

She could only hear Harry's part of the conversation as the wind whipped all other words away before they could reach her.

"Oi!" he called from the middle of the bridge. "Anyone home?"

"Hey, now, calm down," he said after a short pause. His hands were palm down trying to encourage whoever he was talking to to follow his suggestion.

A bang of a gunshot echoed throughout the valley and Lara saw a faint light shimmer into existence around Harry. He wasn't hurt by whatever had happened, from his stance Lara could tell he was unhappy about being fired upon.

"That wasn't very polite," he called up. His wand reappeared in his hand in a moment. "_Bombarda!"_

The front door of the temple was blasted into kindling by the spell. Gunfire erupted in a torrent as all of the men in the building sighted on Harry through the many windows and from the roof.

By this point Lara was beside herself. Harry was out there fighting and she was cowering behind a rock. She suddenly realised she still had her bow.

She immediately unslung it and nocked an arrow to the string. She sighted on one of the men standing on the roof, choosing one who wasn't shooting as he was the most suspicious. She slowed her breath as she'd been taught and released the arrow towards her target. It flew true even through the gusting wind of the cleft. It struck her target in the neck and he collapsed out of sight as he clutched helplessly at the arrow.

Moments later the entire roof exploded and six other attackers were killed outright or thrown out into the abyss by the fiery blast which brought down a part of the cliff-face. She was grateful when they all missed the bridge Harry was still standing on, it would surely have collapsed had the cliff fallen upon it.

Lara sighted on another of the attackers, this one firing concealed from a window on the second floor of the building when she suddenly felt the hairs on the back of her next stand on end. She threw herself to the ground without thinking, an action which saved her life as a _katana_ cut through the space her neck had occupied mere moments earlier.

She rolled over on the ground and attempted to bring her bow to bear on the new attacker but what she saw made her numb fingers release the arrow to fly uselessly against the chasm walls.

Before her was a large group of ancient Japanese samurai dressed in the style of Sengoku period warriors. What really drew her eye was a _huge_ man who looked like a cross between a giant, a sumo-wrestler and a tank. He was at least 9 feet tall and in his hands he held a mace larger than Lara herself.

She scrambled backwards towards the bridge as the warriors advanced on her. "Harry!" she cried in panic. "Help!"

She didn't know if he heard her but it didn't matter. The big one had caught up with her and had its huge mace held high, ready to strike. Lara breathed out and closed her eyes. How had it come to this?

* * *

**A/N:** As you can imagine with the number of fics I have running simultaneously it becomes hard to devote time to any specific one. However, it becomes _very_ easy to devote time to writing in general. I'm always in the mood for _something_ and this time it was this thing.

This took a while to happen as I couldn't decide what I wanted them to do next. On the one hand there was canon events and on the other there was divergence. Divergence was the obvious route to go down but it also took some level of thought and planning (curses). Anyway. Cheers everyone for the reviews. I know this is probably my least anticipated story but it still gets an amazing response.


	7. Probably Not Zombies

**A/N: **A chapter, a chapter, my kingdom for a chapter!

* * *

Harry strode confidently towards the windworn bridge that represented the single precarious path forwards. Despite its obvious age it still looked sturdy and though the drop was sheer he'd never had any kind of fear of heights. He walked up in clear view of anyone watching from within the temple on the far side, he was firm in the belief that his shield charm, which he'd placed about himself, would be more than up to the task of deflecting any fire should it come to that. He very much doubted that they had any way in which they could hope to injure him.

As he stepped onto the bridge the wind snapped around him and his clothes flicked and flapped noisily. For a moment he reflected that it probably made him look very impressive indeed. A particularly strong gust hit him as he stepped farther out onto the bridge and he began to pay more attention to his footing in the unbalancing wind. It was strong enough to almost pull the breath from his lungs and he could feel the bridge flex alarmingly beneath him.

"Oi!" he called up when he reached the midpoint of the bridge. "Anyone home?"

For a moment he thought his words had gone unheard, swept away by the whistling wind but then a response came. "You shouldn't have come here, weak one!" an angry and heavily accented voice cried down from some unseen nook high upon the monastery's carven stone facade.

"Hey now," Harry called back as he made calming gestures with his hands. "Calm down. N—"

The crack of a gunshot cut through the whistling winds and echoed across the canyon at the same moment as Harry's shield charm flickered dimly into existence. Harry shook his head in disappointment. He hadn't expected any better really but he'd still held out a faint hope.

He just wanted to know what had driven these men to such homicidal violence. Surely working together to escape was much better than trying to kill everyone who stepped foot on the island?

At least he'd managed to convince Lara to hang back. Not having to protect her from gunfire meant he could dedicate his efforts towards much more destructive endeavors.

"That wasn't very polite!" he shouted to his unseen assailant. He flicked his wand into his hand from where he'd kept it concealed up a sleeve and brandished it at the heavy wooden doors that stood closed at the base of the cliff before him. The wind rose again about him and his next word was lost completely to his enemies as it was swept away.

"_Bombarda!"_

Though the incantation might have been whipped away by the wind, the spell itself was not. The powerful and invisible spell instantly shattered the door into a cloud of broken wood and splinters as cries of surprise and pain came from the men who'd been hidden behind it.

A bare moment later, just enough time for the men in the monastery to process the shock, gunfire erupted from all of the windows and balconies of the canyon temple.

His shield charm flared more brightly this time but still every bullet was stopped dead by the wall of light and magic. Carefully, and without much concern for the torrent of metal being fired at him Harry began to sight on his attackers and methodically knocked each of them out of the fight with well-placed _Bombardas_ which exploded their cover about them.

He wasn't worried about the chance of injuring them. It was clear these men were beyond any kind of reason. Even after the war with Voldemort Harry held that killing should never be a first option, and for someone with magic it never needed to be. At the same time he didn't want his enemies waking up and potentially putting Lara or her friends in danger. He had no real way of holding them permanently that wouldn't cause him a severe inconvenience, or possibly endanger Lara and himself.

The more permanent methods he could think of to hold them could more accurately be described as methods of prolonging death, rather than as methods for keeping prisoners. It wasn't like he was going to build a gaol and keep them fed while he was exploring the island for the source of the blanketing wards.

So he settled for inflicting fairly grievous injury with stony shrapnel. After the earlier fight in the village and what had been likely to happen to Lara he felt very little guilt about it indeed.

As he thought of his companion she entered the fight in spectacular fashion. An arrow flew flawlessly through the gusting wind to strike the throat of one of the men on the roof of the monastery. But it was the explosion that followed that caused Harry to stop for a moment to watch in a mixture of pride and respect as the whole roof was engulfed in flames. Another four men were thrown from the roof to fall screaming into the black depths of the chasm.

He turned back to give her an enthusiastic thumbs up but when he did he was confronted with a completely unexpected sight.

Japanese samurai carrying swords and full medieval looking armour had appeared from the subterranean pilgrimage path and Lara was scrabbling backwards on the ground as a huge man, at least the size of Hagrid, advanced on her. In both hands he held a colossal mace, at least as long as Harry was tall. It would turn Lara into little more than a smear.

"Harry!" he heard her cry in desperation. "Help!"

Without any further thought or planning Harry stabbed his wand towards her. _"Accio!"_ he shouted on instinct.

She screamed in surprise as Harry's spell yanked her towards him roughly. He realised a moment later that catching her wasn't likely to be easy but before he could follow that thought any further her flying body collided with his and sent them tumbling along the bridge in a messy rolling ball of bruised limbs.

They ended up laying at the base of the stairs that lead to the temple amongst the ruins of the great doors.

"Urgh," Harry groaned groggily as he tried to shake off the effects of the dizzying tumble.

Lara shifted on top of him and grunted quietly herself. She'd probably got the worst of the deal, unlike Harry she didn't have any magic to soften the landing.

There was no time to check on her though as he could see the samurai figures advancing on them both across the rubble-strewn bridge. Their swords flashed menacingly and Harry could hear angry shouting, though he couldn't make out any words. Behind the samurai walked the hulking troll-like thing clad in armour that would have looked at home on a Muggle tank.

He scrambled out from beneath his companion and brandished his wand with a shout, "_Expulso!_"

Bright blue light flashed from his wand towards the nearest of the encroaching samurai and dissipated almost completely against his armour. The armoured man was knocked back on his heels but nothing more, he shook his fearsomely masked head and in moments was advancing on Harry and Lara again. The curse he had used should have blown any human back hard enough to break bones.

Harry reached down and hoisted Lara up and put her arm over his shoulder as he half carried the dazed woman backwards towards the dubious safety of the temple behind them.

Spells flew from his wand in a torrent as he sought to find something that would hold the approaching samurai back. Cutting Curses, Slashing Curses, Blasting Curses, Hurling Hexes; none of them did anything more than knock his targets back slightly. Bizarrely the Jelly Legs Jinx he tried in desperation was perhaps the most effective option. It was not even close to being enough though.

"_Bombarda Maxima!_" Harry cried as he levelled his wand at the ground at the feet of the still encroaching enemies.

The explosion threw the group back and two were blown off the bridge entirely and fell into the foggy depths with incoherent angry shouts. Seeing the result of that Harry quickly altered his strategy. He released Lara, who stumbled on towards the heap of rubble that had once been the doors to the temple. He was gratified to see her steps become more sure with each moment that passed. His shoulder squared and he faced his foe head on.

"_Depulso!"_ he incanted. The chunks of rock and wood that had been blasted free by his earlier spell shot towards their attackers with blinding speed. He was sure there were some broken bones from _that_ attack. Finally, something was effective against the strange anti-magic that had been infused into their armour somehow. It was at least as resistant as dragonhide.

He'd have to retrieve some of it later.

Banishing objects into them was the more effective strategy and soon the bridge was coming apart under Harry's magical barrage. It was as if time was running in reverse and the bridge was slowly deconstructing itself one aged stone at a time. Each would lift away from the bridge and hover in the air for a moment before a shouted "_Depulso!_" would send it careening into the nearest of the encroaching Samurai.

Harry quickly realised it was not a sustainable plan. Not only was the bridge rapidly falling apart at the seams, but the huge giant-like leader was able to almost completely shrug off the heavy stones Harry was throwing his way. Their unusual attackers were slowly advancing on him, the remaining samurai sheltered by their much larger compatriot.

"Lara!" he called urgently, hoping she could hear him amid the wind and Japanese shouting. "We need to get away from here, I'm running out of bridge to throw!"

She didn't respond so he simply had to hope that she'd heard. After ten more long seconds and their enemies getting ten feet closer despite his best efforts he started to get worried.

Just as he was about to shout to her again he felt her hand on his arm. "Come on, we can hide inside," she said urgently into his ear from mere inches away.

Harry nodded. "_Incendio!" _he cried and a wall of fire sprung up between them and their attackers. He hoped that it would delay them but the magically dampened armour would surely make it almost useless. Magical fire was impressive, of that there was no doubt and against the uninitiated could seem terrifying. Once again, he could only hope that, despite their magical resistance, they were unfamiliar with it.

He was pulled quickly towards the pile of wood and rubble that had replaced the great temple doors after Harry's attempt at diplomacy. The doorway was still gaping open near the top of the rubble pile and they both hurriedly scrambled up the heap of broken rock.

The room beyond was a mess. Part of that was down to the short-lived battle that had just taken place, but it was obvious that it would be been pretty unpleasant even without Harry and Lara's input.

Dessicated corpses were tied up to poles, an obvious warning to anyone who would enter the temple. Skulls and other human bones were scattered across the floor and the walls were heavily daubed with graffiti and prayers to the Sun Queen.

The air smelled of death, both old and new.

"They've all gone," said Lara as she looked around, her eyes lingering just a moment on the strung up corpses. "I couldn't find any sign of them… other than the obvious, of course."

"Huh," said Harry, shrugging that mystery off as one that would probably be solved in short order. "But it doesn't matter, we need to move and they'd only slow us down so it's best this way."

He looked at the three exits from the large room. "Which way do you think?"

"Up, definitely up," said Lara with certainty. She pointed to the right-hand corridor which led to some stairs which disappeared higher up into the temple.

"Right, keep close then."

Conscious that every delayed second surely brought their pursuers closer they crossed the room to the doorway Lara had indicated. The stairway beyond was old and crumbling, in places even completely destroyed by the ravages of time and whatever it was that had happened there over the centuries.

Soon, they heard shouting and screams coming from up ahead, joined by angry shouts from below as their pursuers charged after them having finally negotiated the enchanted flames.

"Can you block the stairs behind us?" Lara asked as the shouting from behind them echoed louder and louder.

"Oh!" said Harry, mentally chiding himself for not thinking of that first. "Good idea, I doubt we'll be going back that way anyway. _Engorgio!_"

The stone that Harry had gestured at grew quickly until it was wedged immovably across the stairway they'd been climbing. It was by no means a perfect fit, a sprightly person could probable squeeze over the top to continue the pursuit but they'd almost certainly have to leave their armour behind.

The stairs were not long and soon they reached another room, this one almost certainly right above the one they'd just left. Here too there were corpses everywhere. Some had obviously been brought low by Harry's indiscriminate explosion spells. But not all.

"Harry, look at this," said Lara when she found something particularly unpleasant.

It was a severed head, and the body was nearby. Harry hadn't done _this_. "Shit," he said immediately. "Some of those samurai guys are in here too."

"Lets just get out of here," said Lara, sharing his reaction. "I don't want to be here if they decide to come back."

That was a very good point and he was reminded of her earlier statement, exactly where had they all gone? They could only have had minutes to kill everyone in the room and yet there was no evidence of them save the mess they left behind.

"Agreed. But keep an eye out," he suggested. "They must still be in here somewhere."

In the absence of any other path they continued deeper into the cliff through a tunnel rough-hewn through the rock. Slowly the walls become better defined and the ancient engravings they'd seen earlier returned to the walls. Suddenly the path opened into a large room.

"It's a tomb," breathed Lara as she looked up at the huge statue that stood proudly in an alcove at the far end of the room. In the centre of the room was a large and heavily adorned stone sarcophagus.

To either side of the statue, sat in prayer in a way curiously reminiscent of the many Buddha statues Harry had seen in his time in Japan, were the statues of two powerful looking warriors carrying the yari spears of ancient Japan.

"The Sun Queen and her Stormguard," said Lara as she approached the statues slowly.

"That's what those things were?" asked Harry in surprise. "Stormguard? How in Merlin's name are they still around after all these years?"

"Some kind of cult, maybe?" said Lara as she read the inscriptions upon the sarcophagus.

Harry couldn't believe that. "That managed to keep going without its figurehead for more than six centuries?"

But Lara wasn't listening. "Himiko," she whispered as she brushed her hand reverently over one of the inscribed words. "The first Sun Queen."

She turned to Harry with a broad grin on her face. "This is _her_ tomb, Harry!"

Well that scuppered Harry's single theory for how the Stormguard had managed to sustain itself over the long centuries. Unless… He moved forward and with a grunt managed to slide the heavy stone lid back a bit so that he could peek inside.

A glint of gold shone within and after a whispered _Lumos_ he found himself looking at the very definitely dead crowned skeleton of Himiko herself.

"Shit," he muttered to himself.

Lara heard him. "Is she not there?" she asked as she pushed in closer to get a look. When she saw the remains she looked at Harry in confusion. "That's a bad thing? After what you said I was expecting zombies."

"It means," said Harry with a small amount of chagrin, "I have no idea who's leading the Stormguard. They have to be lead by _someone _and my first guess was this lady. Looks like that theory's a bust."

"But it could still be any one of the other Sun Queens, Himiko's successors?" suggested Lara after a moment. She realised what she'd just said and laughed. "Was that me actually trying to be _positive_?"

Harry smiled at her joke. "You're actually doing a good job. Immortal magic users I've seen before, I have an idea of how they might have done it. If it's something else entirely we might be in trouble."

"So, in this case the unquiet dead is the good option?" said Lara, still amused by the irony.

"Oh hush," said Harry at last.

Lara shook her head and turned to look at the huge murals painted onto the walls. "Harry, look. Maybe these will give a clue."

There were four of them and they were, all four, almost impossibly well preserved in the dry dark of the chamber. In the first was a young woman, engulfed in flames. Her arms were raised in a gesture of supplication and on her face was a look of beatific tranquility.

"A sacrifice?" suggested Lara.

She was probably right, but Harry couldn't help but comment, "She seems awfully happy about being burned alive."

"That's common in images of this type," said Lara, reminding Harry of her _much_ more impressive resume when it came to archeology. She actually had one, for one. "In most ancient cultures it was considered a blessing to be sacrificed, in some they even competed for the honour of being offered up to their God."

"I imagine they had second thoughts," said Harry, still a little disbelieving. "Fire _hurts_."

Lara shook her head and smiled. "Perhaps, but you'd be amazed how fanatical some of them could be. Even in the West there are tales of pagan witches laughing even as they burned..." She trailed off when she realised Harry was trying to stifle his laughter. "What?"

"Wendelin the Weird," he said simply. "Strange one, that."

"She was burned at the stake?" asked Lara, her brow furrowed in confusion.

Harry grinned. "Yep, forty-seven times. Flame freezing charm," he explained after he took pity on her. "It means that getting burned alive actually just tickles. The only people _actually_ burned alive were probably not witches at all."

"That's…" Lara cast around for a response. She gave up. "Well her name was fitting, I suppose." She turned back and moved to look at the next image.

This one contained another young woman, this time in happier circumstances. She was walking from the sea to a mountain while the sun shone brightly overhead.

"A pilgrimage," said Lara with certainty. "Maybe to this temple?"

"Does she get burned alive before or after the pilgrimage?" asked Harry, his lips quirking slightly in amusement.

Lara shot him a quelling look, it didn't last long though and Harry could see the merest beginnings of a smile adorn her face. "I assume the burning happens after."

In the next image were two figures, one grand and with the light of the sun radiating from her head, the other of smaller stature, the same as in the previous images. The grand figure was emptying a jug of water into another jug held by the pilgrim.

"Some kind of symbolic offering, perhaps?" Lara tried as she looked closer at the image. "If the images run clockwise perhaps she was given the water by Himiko to bear to the place of worship and sacrifice?"

Though he couldn't quite put his finger on what exactly it was, it didn't feel quite right to Harry. He knew that magic users loved their pointless ceremonies but this just seemed overly contrived and pointless. It was more like the kind of thing a Muggle would do to try and convince the Gods to smile upon them. A magic user who had literally installed themselves as a deity would have little need for such artifice.

"Wait, no, it's—" she was cut off by a shout of panic from behind them, it was abruptly cut off and followed by the inarticulate growl of the huge Troll-samurai thing. It lumbered into the room with deceptive speed, its great size meaning that even its slow stride covered the distance quickly. Behind it was dragged the great mace, sparks occasionally flew from where it scraped upon the stone and narrow grooves were left in its wake.

Instantly, Harry's wand was back in his hand and the capstone of the sarcophagus flew through the air to shatter against the beast's bulk. "Lara, we need to move, _now_."

"There's a way out up there," she said as she pointed towards some ancient scaffolding, erected at some time in the murky past for a reason now lost to all. "But it might be hard to get up there with that thing attacking us."

Harry spun his hand in his hand until he was holding it downwards in his fist and he stabbed it towards the ground. The earth shook with the power of the spell and a deep chasm opened up at the feet of the creature, now bare feet away and raising its club in preparation to strike.

"Then let's get moving!" he cried as he turned towards her. The chasm he'd created was not especially wide and it certainly wasn't bottomless. The creature would be able to clamber across fairly quickly once it regained its footing after the tremor.

They ran the short distance towards the scaffolding and Harry cast about desperately for an easy way to climb up to the exit that Lara had seen high upon the cavern wall. There was no ladder they could use and so he'd have to make one himself using magic. He began forming it immediately, his mind focused completely as he transfigured an aging spar of wood into a rudimentary ladder for them both.

"Harry!" called a voice, Lara's he realised belatedly. At the moment he comprehended the warning through his concentration he was hit by a heavy weight and borne to the ground under it.

The weight was Lara. He became aware of a crash as the beast's gigantic mace flew through the space he'd been standing until just a bare second earlier. It bounced across the ground and threw up sparks and chips of shattered stone where it struck before completely destroying a large part of the creaky scaffolding.

On the other side of the chasm he'd opened the Troll-samurai roared at them both in rage, loud enough to cause dust to drift down from the ceiling. Then it slowly started backing up from the opening. Getting a run-up, Harry realised. He was running out of time to get Lara out.

"Hold onto your hat," he suggested from his position below her as he brought his wand around to point at her, it was awkward but possible.

She opened her mouth to speak but before she could say anything a whispered _Depulso_ saw her flying through the air towards the opening. "Harry!" she screamed in surprise and panic.

He pushed himself up slightly and cast a cushioning charm on the upper wall towards which she was flying. She bounced off his charm and fell heavily onto the scaffolding which creaked ominously.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief. With Lara out of the way the creature was much less dangerous. His spells might be almost useless against its huge magic resistant bulk but at least it was unlikely to be able to do anything to him. Even without apparition or the other staples of wizard transportation Harry was confident he could steer clear of those huge armour-clad fists.

And the mace was no-longer a concern. "_Evanesco._" he said with a wave towards the huge lumpen weapon. He stood upright to meet the creature even now thundering across the room in its run-up to the pit Harry had opened.

"Harry," shouted Lara from on-high. "Don't you _dare_."

"I'll catch up," he said in a fruitless attempt to convince her to get to relative safety. As he spoke the troll creature threw itself bodily across the gap and landed with enough force to shake the entire room.

Lara didn't dignify Harry with a response and instead unslung her bow again and started firing ineffectual arrows towards the brute, most struck it in the head though they did little more than enrage it further.

Fortunately for Harry the rage didn't actually make it any more dangerous. It roared again and tried to smash Harry with both of its fists together as it brought them down upon him. His shield, still present from so much earlier, easily deflected the force though Harry could feel the weight and power that the creature had put behind the blow.

And so, for that moment, it looked like they might be evenly matched. Two immovable objects arrayed against each-other. Harry, though, still had any number of tricks up his sleeve.

He twirled his wand slowly, always careful to keep half his mind on the shield which was taking a savage beating from the now constantly bellowing beast. It held strong but the magic the infused the armour also meant keeping the shield going was nowhere near as easy as it should have been.

Finally he grunted with effort and pushed outwards with the shield in a powerful shockwave that drove the attacking titan back a step. Breathing room thus created he finished his spell and struck out with his wand as a thin stream of blinding fire issued from it.

The fiery rope wrapped around the huge figure and it howled in pain as the burning tendril cut deep. The smell of burned flesh crept into the air, the heavy armour plates that had proved so resistant to so much of Harry's more normal magics simply weren't up to the challenge of turning away the heat of his fire whip.

But then the creature grabbed the flames in its huge gauntleted hands and then it _heaved_.

The fire snuffed out.

The great beast fell to its knees as it was released and Harry backed away, unsure what to try next.

"Harry, I found a ladder!" came Lara's voice behind him. "Hurry, before it recovers."

He glanced back and she had indeed managed to find a ladder long enough for him to reach the exit he'd thrown Lara towards. It took him only a moment to decide that in this case discretion was very much the better part of valour. He turned and hightailed it to the ladder as quickly as he good.

Fortunately the battle had taken its toll on the creature and though it lifted itself back to its feet after bare seconds upon the ground it did not immediately rush towards Harry. Instead it peered at him with the same kind of animal wariness he'd seen from wounded dragons.

Harry felt a small amount of indecision as he looked back one last time as he climbed the ladder. It did not sit well with him to leave it after all the effort he'd gone to but the real truth was there wasn't all that much in the way of visible damage done to it. Had he obviously had it on its last legs then he would have pressed his advantage. As it was he had already tried a great many of his spells and none had proven effective. All it would take was a lapse of concentration as it had beat upon his protective charms and he could have been the one limping away.

No, it was best to avoid that confrontation until it was absolutely necessary. One thing he'd learned on his travels was one never intentionally sought out a fight in a survival situation. Even in victory he might leave himself too weakened to deal with some other more pressing problem.

Such as the one that awaited him at the top of the ladder.

As soon as his hand reached the top it was grabbed by Lara who, with strength that frankly astounded Harry, pulled him up almost bodily. Then she hugged him. Then she punched him. Then she hugged him again.

At last she stepped back again and glared at him. "Don't. You. Dare do that again," she said and punctuated each word with a prod at his chest.

Harry forwent a response when a large troop of the Samurai warriors burst into the room below, giving their hulking leader backup at last. Some were armed with bows and Harry immediately pushed Lara into the safety of the tunnel. Before he joined her a spell reduced to the scaffolding and ladder upon which they'd been standing to broken splinters. He turned back and made his way after Lara, he ignored the screams of rage from the warriors below.

"Look," he said once they'd both moved a safe distance down the hall. "It was the only thing I could think of to keep you safe."

"It's not about keeping _me_ safe," Lara hissed, her eyes alight. "We're in this together and that means each of us is only safe if we're both safe. You're not my bodyguard, Harry."

Harry let out a breath of frustration but thought on what she said. In a way, he supposed, she was right. It was about trust, really. If this was going to work, and if Lara was going to be anything other than a burden, he had to trust her to not get herself killed. If he wasted his time and effort protecting her he'd just be hobbling himself.

He thought back to his adventures at Hogwarts and beyond. Trust was probably the biggest reason why Hermione, Ron and he had been such an effective team. They each simply trusted each other to hold up their end, it was unspoken.

But they had magic. Lara was just a muggle who'd only recently graduated from university.

A muggle who'd quite possibly killed more men during their time on the island than Harry had.

He nodded firmly. "I understand. Now, let's get going. I doubt it will take them long to find a way up here."

After a short walk the corridor opened out to a narrow cliff path. Then the radio crackled into life again.

#Cshh# "H, hello? Is anyone there?"

Lara gasped and clutched at the little device. "Sam!"

* * *

**A/N: **Apologies about the long delay on this and my other stories. I don't have much excuse but the fact that having a proper job rather eats into the time I usually spend writing. I'm still kinda trying to find a way around it. It might get better; it might not. But I'll not give up.

Thanks for all the reviews and interest, for such a niche fic I'm constantly surprised by the reception it gets. Also, it's now a little over a year old. My, how time flies.


End file.
